Carmen Blacker OBE FBA (13 July 1924 – 13 July 2009) was a British Japanologist. She was a lecturer in Japanese at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

Life

Blacker was born in

Kensington Kensington is an area of London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, around west of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up by Kensingt ...

in 1924. Her parents were Carlos Paton Blacker and Helen Maud (born Pilkington). By the age of 12 she had a book about Japanese grammar. In 1942 she began attending the

School of Oriental and African Studies The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS University of London; ) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury area ...

(SOAS) in London, from where she was recruited by the codebreakers at the

Government Code and Cypher School The Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) was a British signals intelligence agency set up in 1919. During the First World War, the British Army and Royal Navy had separate signals intelligence agencies, MI1b and NID25 (initially known as R ...

Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and Bletchley Park estate, estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire), that became the principal centre of Allies of World War II, Allied World War II cryptography, code-breaking during the S ...

. She left because she saw no benefit in the work, for which she was paid two pounds a week because she was a young woman. She met the Orientalist and

sinologist Sinology, also referred to as China studies, is a subfield of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on China. It is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of the Chinese civilizatio ...

Arthur Waley Arthur David Waley (born Arthur David Schloss, 19 August 188927 June 1966) was an English orientalist and sinologist who achieved both popular and scholarly acclaim for his translations of Chinese and Japanese poetry. Among his honours were ...

at Bletchley Park, and he inspired her to study Chinese in her spare time.Carmen Blacker FBA
In 1944 she arranged to receive lessons in Japanese from Major General Francis S. G. Piggott. After graduating from SOAS in 1947 she began her studies at

Somerville College, Oxford Somerville College is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. It was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. It began admitting men in 1994. The colle ...

. In 1952 she began visiting Japan. In 1955 she was appointed an assistant lecturer at the

and in 1958 she became University Lecturer in Japanese Studies. She visited Japan in the summer vacations to study

Buddhism Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

, staying with Osaragi Jiro in

Kamakura , officially , is a city of Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. It is located in the Kanto region on the island of Honshu. The city has an estimated population of 172,929 (1 September 2020) and a population density of 4,359 people per km2 over the tota ...

, where she practised

zazen ''Zazen'' is a meditative discipline that is typically the primary practice of the Zen Buddhist tradition. The generalized Japanese term for meditation is 瞑想 (''meisō''); however, ''zazen'' has been used informally to include all forms ...

. She also became interested in shugendō. Her book ''The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan'' (1975) was a result of these visits and was partly based on her extensive fieldwork, during which she participated in Kaihōgyō and ascetic life in Japan. Blacker was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1989. She was awarded the Minakata Kumagusu Prize in 1998.Obituary Carmen Blacker
''Japan Times'', retrieved 27 November 2015 Blacker was a member of the Folklore Society, and served as its President from 1982 to 1984. As President she delivered two addresses: “The Exiled Warrior: The Legend and its Ramifications in Japan” and “Minakata Kumagusu: A Neglected Japanese Genius”. She married her longtime partner, the Chinese scholar Michael Loewe, in 2002. She had met Loewe at

. Blacker died in a nursing home in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

on 13 July 2009, her 85th birthday.

Works

* ''The Japanese Enlightenment: A Study of the Writings of Fukuzawa Yukichi'', 1964 * ''The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan'', three editions 1975, 1986, 1999 * ''Ancient Cosmologies'', 1975 * ''Divination and Oracles'', 1981 * ''Collected Writings of Carmen Blacker'', 2000. * ''Women and Tradition: A Neglected Group of Folklorists'', 2000 (with H. R. Ellis Davidson) * ''The Straw Sandal'', translation of a novel by Santō Kyōden, 2008

Collection of essays about Blacker's life and work

Carmen Blacker, Scholar of Japanese Religion, Myth and Folklore: Writings and Reflections
', edited by Hugh Cortazzi, Folkestone, Kent: Renaissance Books, 2017 (since made an imprint of Amsterdam University Press).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Blacker, Carmen 1924 births 2009 deaths Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford British Japanologists Fellows of the British Academy People from Kensington Presidents of the Folklore Society

Black Black is a color that results from the absence or complete Absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorption of visible spectrum, visible light. It is an achromatic color, without Colorfulness#Chroma, chroma, like white and grey. It is ofte ...

British expatriates in Japan Bletchley Park people Officers_of_the_Order_of_the_British_Empire