Whispering Leaves in Grosvenor Square Book

This short memoir by the wife of the then Japanese Ambassador to London (later to become Japan's post-war prime minister of national reconstruction in the 1950s), was first published by Longmans Green and Company in 1938. Yukiko was a gifted bi-lingual writer and poet and this book combines both his talents. In one sense, the book is a "stream of consciousness" with one memory moving on to envelop the next throughout the text. In another sense, it is also a record of times past seen from the standpoint of an often lonely wife of a senior Japanese diplomat seeking to achieve a life of her own (including a friendship with Mrs Neville Chamberlain) at a time of worsening world tension and incresingly bad relations between Britain and Japan. This volune should have particular appeal to both British and Japanese readers who have links with the period, and who have a special interest in Anglo-Japanese relations, and diplomatic history. It is very much an unusual "mini" memoir. Professor Ian Nish offers an informative general overview of the perio. Dorothy Britton (Lady Bouchier) also supplies a valuable pen-portrait of Yukiko Yoshida who died two months before the outbreak of the Pacific War.Read More