In Memoriam
CARMEN BLACKER
(1924-2009)
Carmen Blacker, who died peacefully on 13 July – her 85th birthday – was one of the most gifted scholars in Japanese Studies of the twentieth century, distinguished above all for her writings in the fields of religion, myth and folklore, with the Catalpa Bow: A study of shamanistic practices in Japan being her most notable work, which was republished in several editions following first publication in 1975.
In 2008, Global Oriental had the privilege of publishing her last work – her translation of Santō Kyōden’s late-eighteenth century novel (considered by Ashton to be his masterpiece) entitled, The Straw Sandal or The Scroll of the Hundred Crabs (Mukashibanashi Inazuma Byōshi). As Carmen notes in her Preface, she began the translation in the war years while she was at Bletchley Park; thus, it was to be both her first and last contribution to her world of Things Japanese, which she had first discovered in her conversations as a girl with her father’s friend Major-General Francis Piggott, formerly military attaché in Tokyo and a leading figure of the Japan Society, London, at that time.
[See The Times obit, 15 July 2009]
ends
Global Oriental Publishers Weblog 