Rhythms, Rites and Rituals. Dorothy Britton

      MY LIFE has been so full of remarkable friendships that this book could have gone on and on. I wish I could have told about all of them. They usually had fascinating beginnings, too. The Australian actress Geraldine Ward was sitting opposite us on a train from Hastings to London, and was so mystified by Derek, in his father’s RAF blazer, who seemed unable to speak. She came to the conclusion he must have suffered a plane crash in the war and she started a sympathetic conversation. We became friends, and she used to visit us in Japan on her way to Australia, and we always got together when in London. Then there was the phone call from a Japanese secretary at the US Naval Base in Yokosuka, who knew I was the widow of an RAF air marshal, and thought I might be interested to know that a lady Captain had just arrived with a retired British air force commander husband. When I rang him, he said yes, he was a commander – but in the Royal Navy! ‘You sound English,’ he said. ‘Let’s meet.’ And Ted and Derek and I became very close friends of the interesting Balink-Whites, whom we visited in their home in Florida as well as in New Zealand where she was once posted – the only country which agreed to take a female naval attaché!

      And there was a remarkable coincidence. A group of high school teachers from the USA came to my house to hear about my translating Japanese literature. When I had finished talking, and we were having refreshments, one of the women casually mentioned that her great aunt had been killed in the Great Earthquake in Yokohama. My spine tingled, and I asked if her name was Edith Lacy. Next day I took her to see the grave with our aunts’ names upon it. And then there was Edna Read, whom Paul Norbury, my wonderful publisher, asked me to meet to persuade her to write her own extraordinary Anglo-Japanese story.

      And what would Derek and I have done without the Hoiseths? Our grocer all of a sudden introduced our neighbour Rodney who was in need of a blurb for his splendid book for learning English. We became friends, and eventually since they were unencumbered with children, he and his lovely wife Junko agreed to share my house with Derek and me after Ted passed away. I take Derek with me almost everywhere, but occasionally it is not possible, and since I do not like to leave him at home alone, it is marvellous to be able to ask the Hoiseths to keep an eye on him. Like my husband Boy, Junko has a ‘green thumb’ when it comes to plants and flowers, so thanks to her our tiny garden always looks lovely. And dear Rodney knows all about computers! We get along so well and feel like family. What a wonderful coincidence that Rodney needed that blurb! My whole life has been an example of how intertwined our karma is, and how one thing leads to another.

      JAPANESE NAMES

      Throughout this memoir I have presented Japanese names according to Western styling, that is, with the given name first followed by the family name. Also, for the sake of simplicity, I have avoided using the macron to mark the long vowel in Japanese words comprising an ‘o’ or ‘u’. I hope my scholarly friends will not be too critical of this decision!

      DB

      List of Plates

      1Alice Hiller in Yokohama en route to Shanghai in 1920

      2Frank Britton’s house in Yokohama, c. 1920

      3Frank Britton’s enlarged and improved house in Yokohama

      4Frank and Alice

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