Colin Fox has been part of the Japan Forum for almost as long as he has been the Group Marketing Manager at English Lakes. Japan has been our number one international market and this strong relationship is set to continue for many years to come. Japanese guests visit the Lake District for its rich cultural history and timeless landscape. Colin writes below about a new exhibition which combines both English and Japanese culture across the centuries.
At the end of June I was invited to go along to the official opening of the newest exhibition, Wordsworth and Bashō: Walking Poets, at Dove Cottage in Grasmere. I suspect that I was invited in my capacity as Chairman of the Japan Forum or as a self-confessed Japanophile. I was certainly interested to see this collection of cross cultural works of visual and written word. The opening ceremony speeches included David Warren, current Chair of the Japan Society and ex British ambassador in Tokyo, who talked about the importance of a great relationship between Britain and Japan and the synergies between the two countries.

The Walking Poets : Wordsworth and Bashō

Amidst the plethora of writings about William Wordsworth’s life, both historical and fictional, this book, I believe, would please the great man himself – perhaps most of all in belated gratitude for the sister who offered up much of her life in loyal service and sacrifice. Even Dorothy’s celebrated journal was written with the declared motivation, ’to give William pleasure’.
Dances with the Daffodils, by Matthew Connolly, is a beautiful fictional recreation of Dorothy’s life, her inspirational love of nature and her complicated emotions surrounding the fierce loyalty felt towards her brother. Connolly introduces Dorothy to a fictive suitor and a strange fusion of lives – aspirations, yearnings, frustration and innocence – occurs at the moment their lives touch on that memorable day on the shores of Ullswater, in the reflection of the immortalised ‘host of daffodils’. (more…)