Carmen Blacker was an outstanding scholar of Japanese culture, known internationally for her writings on religion, myth and folklore – her most notable work being The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan. Importantly, a third of the volume comprises significant extracts from the author’s diaries covering a period of more than forty years, together with a plate section drawn from her extensive photographic archive, thus providing a rare opportunity to gain a personal insight into the author’s life and work. The volume includes a wide selection of writings from distinguished scholars such as Donald Keene and her former pupil Peter Kornicki in celebration of her work and legacy, together with various essays and papers by Carmen Blacker herself that have hitherto not been widely available. In addition to her scholarship, Carmen Blacker was also highly regarded for her work in promoting Japanese Studies at Cambridge and played a vital role in helping to re-establish The Japan Society, London, post-war.

Sir Hugh Cortazzi, GCMG, was British Ambassador to Japan 1980-1984 and Chairman of The Japan Society, London, 1985-1995. He has written extensively on Japan. His many books include Isles of Gold: Antique Maps of Japan (1983), The Japanese Achievement (1990) and his memoir Japan and Back and Places Elsewhere (1998). He compiled and edited seven volumes of Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits, most recently volume X (2016).

Foreword by Mami Mizutori, SISJAC

Preface by Hugh Cortazzi

Introduction: Carmen Blacker – Friend, Scholar and Wife by Michael Loewe

List of Contributors

List of Plates

Map of Japan

Japan’s Prefectures

PART I: CARMEN BLACKER AS SEEN BY HER FRIENDS

1. Carmen Elizabeth Blacker, 1924 –2009: A Biographical Memoir by James McMullen

2. Biographical Portrait by Peter Kornicki

3. Memories of Carmen Blacker by Yokoyama Toshio

4. Words from Hugh Cortazzi at Carmen Blacker’s Memorial Meeting

PART II: SELECTED EXTRACTS FROM CARMEN BLACKER’S DIARIES AND OTHER AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS

• Carmen Blacker’s ‘Introduction’ to her Collected Writings

• Introducing Carmen Blacker’s Diaries by Hugh Cortazzi

Plate section

• Extracts from the Diaries

PART III: SELECTED BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS BY CARMEN BLACKER

5. Three Great Japanologists: Chamberlain, Aston and Satow

6. Marie Stopes

7. Arthur Waley

8. Minakata Kumagusu

9. Yoshio Markino

10. Christmas Humphreys

11. Cambridge Women

PART IV: SELECTED Academic Writings

12. The Shinza or God-seat in the Daijsai: Throne Bed, or Incubation Couch?

13. Divination and Oracles in Japan

14. The Goddess Emerges from her Cave: Fujita Himiko and her Dragon Palace Family

15. ‘The Exiled Warrior and the Hidden Village’: A Possible Solution to the Enigma of the Heike-densetsu.

16. Extracts from Legends of Heike Villages: The Fugitive Warrior as Ancestor

17. The Language of Birds

18. The Angry Ghost in Japan

PART V: SELECTED CARMEN BLACKER LECTURES

19. Remembering Carmen Blacker

Donald Keene

20. A Glimpse of the Modestly Literate Picnic Lovers of Old Japan

Toshio Yokoyama

21. Tsushima: Japan Viewed from the Margins – Archives, Books, Ginseng

Peter Kornicki

22. Amaterasu’s Progress: The Ise Shrines and the Public Sphere of Post-war Japan

John Breen

23. Unofficial and Commoner Worship of Confucius in Tokugawa Japan James McMullen

PART VI: A CELEBRATORY ESSAY

24. The Search for the Numinous in Wordsworth and Coleridge: Some Hints from The Catalpa Bow

Hisaaki Yamanouchi

APPENDIX: Carmen’s Literary Gift. Compiled by Paul Norbury

Bibliography

Index