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Carmen Blacker

 She also played a critical role in helping to re-establish The Japan Society, London, in the early post-war years and contributed greatly to its future success through her lectures, as a member of Council and later as Honorary Vice President.  Amongst her most significant writings were The Japanese Enlightenment: A Study of the Writings of Fukuzawa Yukichi (1964) and The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan (1975) which appeared in several editions, most recently the third edition (1999), confirming her place as one of the world’s leading scholars in Japanese religion and folklore.  In 2000 she published her Collected Writings with her final work – a translation of Santō Kyōden’s The Straw Sandal: The Scroll of the Hundred Crabs – appearing in 2008