The Impact of Women on Japanese History: Watch Lesley’s Talk at The Daiwa Foundation
Much enjoyed speaking on Japan’s powerful women at the Daiwa Foundation to a large and enthusiastic audience who gathered despite the tube strike! […]
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Tour dates, public lectures and other news
Women and Power in Japanese History – History with Chris Harding
Chris Harding visits novelist and historian Lesley Downer at her home, to talk about how she became interested in Japan and about an array of fascinating women who have helped to shape Japanese history. […]
Alderney Literary Festival – March 2025
Hugely enjoyed my visit to Alderney to speak at its wonderful Festival. Of the ten authors seven were stranded for the night at Southampton because of fog in Alderney, which meant we all had a chance to bond. We finally got there the next day by flying to Guernsey then taking the boat over choppy waters to Alderney […]
The Shortest History of Japan – The Interlocutor Podcast – Ep. 31
In conversation with Tyrel Cameron Eskelson – talking about Lesley’s career as a writer about Japan. […]
Author Interview – Adventures In Historyland Podcast
Talking to Joshua Provan about The Shortest History of Japan, and how she found the stories to make Japanese history more accessible than ever. […]
Silk Roads exhibition: Review In Historia Magazine
Lesley Downer, the author of The Shortest History of Japan, reviews the Silk Roads exhibition at the British Museum, open until February, 2025. […]
Lesley Downer on Poetry in Japan’s Deep North – Personal Landscapes Podcast
Speaking about about Matsuo Basho’s haiku, mountain ascetics and Japan’s undiscovered north. […]
Talk at The Japan Society on 21st October
Not all shoguns and samurai. On Monday October 21st, I will be speaking to the Japan Society on some of the extraordinary women who populate Japanese history, starting with Himiko the Shaman Queen. […]
Himiko the Shaman Queen: On The History Girls Blog
Two thousand years ago the land we now know as Japan was a patchwork of over a hundred small kingdoms, perpetually at war. Armies fought to grab more and better land for farming and to control the water supplies of river and lakes, fighting with bows and arrows and stone and bronze weapons. […]
Travel in Old Japan: In Unseen Histories
In this piece Lesley Downer, an expert of Japanese culture and history and the author of The Shortest History of Japan and On the Narrow Road to the Deep North, explains how an advanced society sought to move without wheels.[…]