Octopus dreams: Japan, Stonehenge, Knossos
Cultural echoes spring up tentacle-like in the most unexpected of places. Japan and Stonehenge, Japan and Knossos – who would have thought it? … Read more
Blog
Lesley Downer’s personal blog
Issey Miyake, a great loss
For me, for the fashion industry, for everyone, this is huge news and a great loss of a warm and wonderfulman who created glorious fabrics and clothes. In the 90s I went to the 21st anniversary celebrations of theIssey Miyake brand where Larry Adler (remember him?) unforgettably played Rhapsody in Blue accompanied by Gershwin himself … Read more
Lesley Downer featured in JETAA UK Newsletter
I went to Japan in 1978 as a member of the very first group of English teachers on the Wolfers Scheme which later became known as the Japan English Teachers’ Programme – JET. So very proud to be featured in the newsletter for the Alumni Association. Read full article: JET Spotlight: Lesley Downer See also … Read more
Rodin’s Japanese Muse
Some of the most intriguing of August Rodin’s works are the fifty three heads, masks and busts of the Japanese dancer Hanako he made late in life, several of which are currently on display at the Tate Modern exhibition The Making of Rodin. Some are calm and placid, but many are contorted in anguish or … Read more
More Tales of Japan’s Warlords – and their Women
II – Hideyoshi, His Wife Nene and His Hundred Concubines
‘Your beauty grows day by day. Tokichiro complains about you constantly and it is outrageous. While that bald rat flusters around trying to find another good woman, you remain lofty and elegant. Do not be jealous. Show Hideyoshi this letter.’
So speaks the unexpectedly kindly … Read more
Tales of Japan’s Warlords – and their Women
I – Oda Nobunaga and Nohime
Every Japanese schoolchild knows the story about the warlords and the nightingale. Three men are in a garden when a nightingale lands on a branch. They wait expectantly, hoping to hear its beautiful song. But the nightingale stubbornly refuses to sing. What should they do about it? ‘Kill it,’ … Read more
Princess Atsu’s palanquin
Writing the four novels of the Shogun Quartet and later lecturing on the Meiji Restoration I spent a great deal of time imagining myself back to Kagoshima. It was Princess Atsu’s home town, from where she set out on her fateful journey to Edo, the story I told in The Shogun’s Queen. It was also … Read more
January 29th 1868: the day the Imperial Banners flew
On July 8th 1853 four warships appear at the mouth of Edo Bay, threatening Edo, the shogun’s capital, today known as Tokyo. Their leader is the American Commodore Matthew Perry, on a mission to open Japan, which has been closed to foreigners for 250 years. Their arrival sparks civil war between north and south … … Read more
Travelling as research
Ibusuki was a beautiful place, a land of gold and sunshine where the sky and ocean were perpetually blue. Cranes swooped, birds twittered, monkeys roamed the flower-clad hills, palm trees swayed and the purple cone of Mount Kaimon, more perfect than Mount Fuji, rose misty on the horizon … The Shogun’s Queen For me researching … Read more
A hidden world: Among the sophisticated geisha of Tokyo
When Atsu was a child her father had many geisha concubines and there were always geisha around the house. She called them all indiscriminately ‘Auntie.’ Her favourite was Wife Number Two, an earthy woman with a loud laugh and big personality, competent and unshakeable, very different from Atsu’s refined mother, Wife Number One. Wife Number … Read more