Rhythms, Rites and Rituals: My Life in Japan in Two-step and Waltz-time - Hardcover

Britton, Dorothy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 189882312X ISBN 13: 9781898823124

Verlag: Routledge, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

Including her survival of Japan's Great Kanto Earthquake, an enthralling account of Dorothy Britton's life, loves and discoveries in a varied life and career. Bilingual from birth, she found the immense joy of blending in with different cultures simply by getting the sound right when speaking their languages so that she herself sounds Japanese.

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Anglo-American writer, poet, composer, musician, Dorothy Britton (Lady Bouchier, MBE) was born in Japan and educated in Britain and the USA. A pupil of Darius Milhaud she is known for her popular Capitol Records album Japanese Sketches, hailed by the American Record Guide as a highly successful 'translation of the koto/samisen aesthetic into occidental terms'. Capitol also commissioned a musical. In addition, she had regular programmes on NHK's Radio Japan introducing Japanese folklore, music and musicians, for listeners abroad, as well as a twelve-year TV programme teaching English conversation to Japanese middle-school pupils and singing British folksongs with her Irish harp. Her distinguished translation of Basho's Narrow Road to a Far Province is a classic. She is also well known for her translation of Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's best-seller Totto-chan, the Little Girl at the Window, and short stories by Ryonosuke Akutagawa. Anglo-American writer, poet, composer, musician, Dorothy Britton was born in Japan and educated in Britain and the USA. A pupil of Darius Milhaud, known for her popular Capitol Records album Japanese Sketches, hailed as a highly successful 'translation of the koto/samisen aesthetic into occidental terms'. Capitol also commissioned a musical. Also known for her translation of Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's best-seller Totto-chan, the Little Girl at the Window, and short stories by Ryonosuke Akutagawa.

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Rhythms, Rites and Rituals

My Life in Japan in Two-step and Waltz-time

By Dorothy Britton

Global Books Ltd

Copyright © 2015 Dorothy Britton
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-898823-12-4

Contents

Plate section faces, 
Preface, 
List of Plates, 
1. Rhythms Are What Divide Us, 
2. My Mother, 
3. My Father, 
4. How Marrying Changes My Father's Life, 
5. The Great Kanto Earthquake, 
6. Hayama, 
7. Mother Contacts Her First Japanese Friend, 
8. Royal Friends, 
9. The Japanese Language, 
10. Winters in Yokohama, 
11. Father's Sudden Death, 
12. England, 
13. Bermuda, 
14. Mills College, 1943-1945, 
15. London, 1945-1949, 
16. Innocence and Ignorance, 
17. Back in Japan – 1949, 
18. Love and Sex, 
19. Meeting 'Boy', 
20. Society in Japan, 
21. Marriage Customs, 
22. Washoku and O-furo, 
23. My Royal Neighbours, 
24. Two Composers, 
25. London and Paris, 
26. Harps and Angels, 
27. Back to Work in Japan, 
28. Dreaming of Elephants, 
29. Finding the Brittons, 
30. Sea Shells, 
31. The 'Katakana Prison' and Mr Suzuki, 
32. Poetry, 
33. The Island in Between, 
34. Marrying 'Boy' – 1968, 
35. The Japanese Crane – Bird of Happiness, 
36. Comfort and Solace with Ted, 
Dorothy Britton's Published Works, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Rhythms Are What Divide Us

* * *

I was a bonny baby, as most small children are, and my nanny called me a bep-pin, a colloquial term meaning 'a beauty', 'a knock-out'. There was, of course, the added glamour of my being a foreign baby. But my nanny soon shortened that and added chan, the affectionate suffix, giving me the nickname 'O-bet-chan'. All my old Japanese friends still call me that – even including one princess! And as with most Japanese nicknames, the origin is not clear.

From the moment she first laid eyes on me in Yokohama, Suzu Numano, my mother's first Japanese friend, from San Francisco days, called me 'The Japanese child with the Western skin'. For born in Japan, I have lived most of my life in two rhythms: the 'one-two, one-two' of Japanese, and English, which is mostly in waltz time. From the time I was a child I was fascinated by the differences in rhythm, and it seemed to me to affect not only the language but everyday life as well. I became very conscious of the fact that Japanese people seemed to move and walk in 2/4 time, while foreigners waltzed about. Footwear may have had something to do with it, for in those days the air was redolent with the kak-ko kak-ko sound of geta, while the heel-ball-toe with a shoe was a 1,2,3. And when they talked, Japanese people made little nods in 2/4 time, while Westerners' heads stayed still.

By the age of three, I had learned to read and my favourite book was Through the Looking glass by Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll. In it Alice pokes the mirror that sits above the mantelpiece and enters the room that she sees in the mirror. It is the same room, but slightly different – a reflected version of it. Everything is the other way around. And I discovered I could enter a slightly different world in another way – just by speaking Japanese! That was my magic looking glass!

And, of course, I spoke it with the right rhythm, like the Japanese spoke it, simply having copied my Japanese nanny; so I seemed to really enter Japan and become Japanese. I thought it was tremendous fun going backwards and forwards between Ja

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Routledge
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 189882312X
• ISBN 13: 9781898823124
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 290
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland