Lesley Downer’s personal blog
Even before Japan opened to the west in 1853, westerners were beginning to discover Japan’s extraordinary culture. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth Japonisme was hugely in vogue. Across Europe and the United States, people filled their houses with fans, screens, blue and white porcelain, netsuke and samurai swords … Read more
A reviewer of The Last Concubine in the highly respected Literary Review wrote: ‘The author, who lived in Japan for many years, has published non-fiction accounts of the lives of the geishas, and capitalises on recent Western interest in their esoteric, vanished world with her detailed depiction of Sachi’s life in the rarefied harem.’ I’m … Read more
The word geisha means ‘arts person’ – gei is ‘art or arts’, sha is ‘person’. Geisha are performers who spend five years – as long as a university course – learning to sing, dance, play musical instruments, act and make charming conversation. They are as strictly trained as ballerinas in the west. But they are … Read more
Ieyasu (1543-1616), the first shogun. A great warrior, he defeated his rival warlords at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 and brought all Japan under his rule. Credited with bringing peace, unity and stability, he made Edo his capital, built Edo Castle and developed the city. He employed the British seafarer William Adams to build … Read more
Various journalists have been phoning me up and asking me how it’s possible that in Japan up until the late nineteenth century there was no word for ‘love’. ‘Can that be true?’ they ask. One of the most fascinating things about Japan is the way in which it makes you question everything you’ve taken for … Read more
Not many people know that the fifteen shoguns had a harem much like a middle eastern seraglio (and, if truth be told, so did the emperors up until Hirohito). The words every young woman in the shogun’s harem hoped to hear were ‘What is her name?’ – the code to indicate that the shogun wanted … Read more