Nationality United Kingdom Name Carmen Blacker | Died July 13, 2009, Cambridge | |
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Born 13 July 1924 Kensington Books The catalpa bow, The Japanese enlightenment People also search for Michael Loewe, Donald Shively, Hilda Ellis Davidson, Santo Kyoden | ||
Carmen Blacker FBA, OST, OBE (13 July 1924 – 13 July 2009) was a British scholar of Japanese language. She was a lecturer in Japanese at Cambridge University.
Contents
Life
Blacker was born in Kensington in 1924. Her parents were Carlos Paton Blacker and Helen Maud (born Pilkington). She was interested in Japanese, by the age of 12 she had a Japanese Grammar and in 1942 she attended the School of Oriental and African Studies where she was identified for top secret work. Blacker was recruited by the code breakers at Bletchley Park but she left because she saw no benefit in the work. She was paid two pounds a week because she was a young woman. She met the difficult Orientalist and sinologist Arthur Waley at Bletchley and he inspired her to learn Chinese in her spare time. In 1944 she arranged lessons in Japanese for herself from Major General Pigott.
Blacker became a Fellow of the British Academy. She was awarded the Minakata Kumagusu Prize in 1998.
She married her longtime partner, the Chinese scholar Michael Arthur Nathan Loewe, in 2002. She had met Loewe at Bletchley Park. Blacker died in a Cambridge nursing home in 2009.
Works
Biography
Carmen Blacker: Scholar of Japanese Religion, Myth and Folklore (Hugh Cortazzi, ed., with James McMullen and Mary-Grace Browning) Kent: Renaissance Books, 2017.
(This book, which has an introduction by Michael Loewe titled 'Carmen Blacker - Friend, Scholar and Wife', was launched on 5 December 2016 at the Society of Antiquaries of London, where Dr Blacker was a Fellow. The book also has diary excerpts and some key unpublished work.)