Japanese women are far from ‘submissive geisha’. Women in Japanese history encompass queens, empresses, the court lady who wrote the world’s first novel, women warriors, courtesans who presided over Japan’s salon culture, flappers and militant feminists. Lesley Downer will tell the stories of some of these powerful Japanese women, putting paid once and for all to the egregious stereotype of the ‘submissive geisha’.
Latest Event
Friday March 28th
11.30 am
Festival Book Club: The Shortest History of Japan
Saturday March 29th
10.00 am
Talk: Writing Unfamiliar History: the History of Japan
How to interest people in the history of a distant country of which they may know very little or nothing?
In my books I’ve looked at Japanese history in different periods and different ways – as the background to travel or biography, brought alive as fiction and as more straightforward written history. I’ll talk briefly about the issues and challenges of dealing with history in these different ways, focussing on my newest book, The Shortest History of Japan, which pulls it all together. Along the way I’ll introduce some of the qualities that make Japanese history different, such as the romance of failure, with stories of the heroes and heroines (and noble failures) who make Japanese history so seductive. My talk will be illustrated with lots of lovely PowerPoint pictures – woodblock prints, etc.