The public is invited to the following lecture. A 1,000 yen donation from non-members would be appreciated, but is not required.
Place: Shibuya Kyoiku Gakuen (1-21-18 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku,
Tokyo150-0002)
About 10 minutes on foot from Shibuya Station (JR East
Exit; subway Miyamasu Exit 10 or 11; or 15 minutes from Omotesando
Station, Exit B2; or 15 minutes from Meiji-Jingumae Station,
Exit 4. The road forking right from Meiji-dori is quite obvious,
and the Gakuen is the first big building after a row of shops,
with a waterfall streaming down one wall.)
Information: ASJ Office
Lady Jane Franklin (1791-1875) is mainly known as the wife of Sir John Franklin, and her other great interest, travel, is not so well known. She could be considered a precursor of the Victorian lady traveller. Her innate curiosity and acute mind brought her to visit parts of the world which were in some instances hardly known and little explored. She recorded her long and interesting life in about 200 diary volumes which are held in the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge. Of special interest to the Asiatic Society is her account of a visit that she made to the Pacific between 1860 and 1862, accompanied by Sir John's niece, Sophia Cracroft, travelling down the east coast of North and South America, passing through the Straits of Magellan and proceeding as far as British Columbia. They paid two visits to the Sandwich Islands, where they were treated like royalty by King Kamehameha and Queen Emma. It took them 90 days to go from there to Yokohama, where they arrived on February 23rd, 1862, and stayed until March 28th. Lady Franklin's diary account of her travels, supplemented by Sophia's diary and letters, constitutes a fascinating view of Japanese society, and European society in Japan, at the time when the country was opening up to foreign influences just prior to the Meiji Restoration.
Dott. Casarini graduated in Modern Languages (specializing in English) from the Universita Cattolica, Milan, with a thesis on English folk ballads in America, and later took a second degree in Letters from the same university, with a thesis on Pirandello's plays in the United States. Her marriage to Dr. Peter Wadhams, Reader in Polar Studies at the University of Cambridge, led to her taking part in an international winter expedition to the Weddell Sea, Antarctica, on board the German research icebreaker Polarstern in 1986, about which she wrote the book Unternehmen Polarstern (Econ Verlag, 1988); she also edited the Log of ice observations.
Her polar experiences led her to study for her M. Phil. in Polar Studies from Cambridge University, which she received in 1989 with a thesis on the first attempt on the part of the Australian explorer, Sir Hubert Wilkins, to take a submarine to the North Pole in 1931. In 1989 she took part in another Antarctic expedition on the Polarstern, and again compiled and edited the Log.
For her current Ph.D. project Dott. Casarini has analysed the diaries and letters of Lady Franklin in the Archives of the Scott Polar Institute, to determine the role that Lady Franklin played in the searches for the lost expedition of her husband, Sir John Franklin, which attempted to discover the Northwest Passage in 1845. While reading the output of the very prolific Lady Franklin, she realized that a very interesting part of this lady's life had been spent travelling. Her diaries form a uniquely valuable set of descriptions of little-known and faraway places which Lady Franklin visited, often being among the first Englishwomen to visit these countries.
In 1993, with her husband and a small international party, Dott. Casarini organized the "Lady Franklin Memorial Expedition", an archaeological expedition to the Canadian Arctic, which brought her to the attention of the Italian media. She was also invited to give a lecture on the expedition at the Royal Geographical Society in London, and has since been invited to lecture at many other institutions. She is also lecturing on polar history to students of the M. Phil. in Polar Studies at Cambridge University.
Adapted from "The Asiatic Society of Japan Bulletin No. 2", February 2001, compiled by Prof. Hugh E. Wilkinson and Mrs. Doreen Simmons.
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