Dates for your Diary

Talk: Japan’s Powerful Women

Date: Thursday, 3 July, 2025
Time: 6:00 pm
Location: Talks At Six, Basil Shippam Centre, Tozer Way, St Pancras, Chichester PO19 7LG
Lady No – Portrait in Gifu Castle

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’.