Historically, An Irish writer [Patrick] Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) wrote numerous essays and books about Japan, which greatly helped introduce Japan to the West.  The first successful Japanese poet Yone Noguchi contributed to present the traditional Japanese poetic form, haiku and tanka, to the West through his lectures, books and his English poems with Japanese tastes.  Particularly, the Imagist Movement was affected by the short Japanese poetry. Joyce's "I Hear an Army" is considered as an Imagist poem.   On Sandymount Strand, Dublin, Stephen Dedalus made a short poem: "He comes, pale vampire, through storm his eyes, his bat sails bloodying the sea, mouth to her mouth's kiss" (U 3.397-8).

On 15 November 2000 in Dublin, Seamus Heaney gave a lecture "Petals on a Bough" as an introduction to a reading of 'Japanese Effect' poems, comparing the Japanese poetry with works of William Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold, Ezra Pound and even a ninth-century Irish poem.  In fact Heaney made some haiku-like brief poems.  Irene De Angelis wrote "The Japanese Effect in Contemporary Irish Poetry (2012) but the Japanese impact in Irish literature is not limited in poetry.  It is widely known that Yeats was inspired by the Japanese Noh play to write The Four Plays for Dancers and Joyce also owned a copy of 'Noh' or Accomplishment: A Study of the Classical State of Japan written by Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound.

It is known that Hearn corresponded with Yeats several times.  Hearn reportedly never spoken about Ireland in Japan, so almost nobody knew his first name was Patrick, a popular Irish boy name the same as the patron saint of Ireland.  However, in a letter to Yeats dated 24 September 1901, he confessed that "I had a Connaught nurse who told me fairy-tales and ghost stories  So I ought to love Irish things, and do."  It is very meaningful that Hearn told his love for Ireland only to Yeats in a letter.