Erotic woodcuts may have once shocked the West, but they were seen as life-affirming in Japan The Japanese erotic art called shunga is so explicit that the British Museum, where the pictures are on show from October 3, has imposed an age limit of 16 on viewers. Shunga means “spring pictures”, “spring” being a Japanese … Read more
Lesley Downer travels alone and at ease in the land where one of our earliest ancestors was born — and where the Queen of Sheba lives on I’m edging my way through a long tunnel in pitch darkness, feeling for the roof so I don’t hit my head, waving my trusty flashlight around to scan … Read more
I arrive at the inn where I am to stay in Kyoto and lug my bag up the steep stairs to my room. The inn was once a geisha house and the room is barely furnished, though it does have a tiny lacquered dressing table with a long narrow mirror. A balcony offers a view … Read more
The Butterfly Effect – BBC Radio 4 Soprano Amanda Roocroft explores the impact of Madame Butterfly in performance and popular culture. […] Author and Japanese expert Lesley Downer and opera enthusiast Rod Wood provide details of the origins of her tragic story and present fascinating insights into the life and work of Puccini. […] First … Read more
My journey to Aizu Wakamatsu, the tragic city at the heart of Across a Bridge of Dreams. It starts to snow soon after the train leaves Koriyama, and further inland at Aizu Wakamatsu the snow is knee deep. My hosts, Nobuyuki and Mikiko, are waiting at the station. I’m relieved to see they’ve brought boots … Read more
Japan specialist Lesley Downer on falling for the cultural enclave of Kyoto with its sashaying geishas and hidden temples I arrive at the inn where I always stay in Miyagawa-cho, one of Kyoto’s five geisha districts, around midday. My hosts, Mr and Mrs Sawai, both in their nineties, are here to greet me. I take … Read more
My new e book short story, A Geisha for the American Consul, is out today! Loved writing the story of Okichi, the very first of the Japanese women forced to sleep with a western man. To Japanese of those days, the 1850s, westerners were as weird and outlandish and appalling as space aliens. Imagine … … Read more
To Kagoshima in search of a great samurai unbowed Flying into Kagoshima from Tokyo across the volcanic landscape of Kirishima and Ebino Kogen, I feel as if I’m arriving in another country. The air is moist and warm, the light sharper, the sky bluer and the foliage intensely green, sprawling exuberantly over the rugged hills. … Read more
A British author unveils the wonders of writing about the Japanese, and how she has fallen in love with a culture not her own. HER first novel tells of the forbidden love between the Japanese shogun’s last concubine and a rebel warrior. Her second takes place in the exotic pleasure quarters of Japan, where a … Read more
At the end of a busy week of lectures, including a trip to Gateshead, nearly as far north as Hadrian’s Wall. Took a train ride to Birmingham and thought I’d flipped through a worm hole and ended up in Tokyo! Birmingham New Street station is as huge and chaotic and confusing as Shinjuku, like a … Read more