1. Carmen Blacker OBE FBA was a British Japanologist.
10 Facts About Carmen Blacker
1. 2.
Carmen Blacker was a lecturer in Japanese at the University of Cambridge.
3.
Carmen Blacker left because she saw no benefit in the work, for which she was paid two pounds a week because she was a young woman.
4.
Carmen Blacker met the Orientalist and sinologist Arthur Waley at Bletchley Park, and he inspired her to study Chinese in her spare time.
5.
Carmen Blacker visited Japan in the summer vacations to study Buddhism, staying with Osaragi Jiro in Kamakura, where she practised zazen.
6.
Carmen Blacker's book The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan was a result of these visits and was partly based on her extensive fieldwork, during which she participated in Kaihogyo and ascetic life in Japan.
7.
Carmen Blacker was awarded the Minakata Kumagusu Prize in 1998.
8.
Carmen Blacker was a member of the Folklore Society, and served as its President from 1982 to 1984.
9.
Carmen Blacker married her longtime partner, the Chinese scholar Michael Loewe, in 2002.
10.
Carmen Blacker died in a nursing home in Cambridge on 13 July 2009, her 85th birthday.