- Brief Synopsis:
Masataka Taketsuru learned the craft of whisky making in Scotland, after which he went on to establish his own distillery in Japan, producing the brand later known worldwide as Nikka Whisky. While a student at Glasgow University, he met and married Jessie (Rita) Cowan, a doctor’s daughter from Kirkintilloch, who, in 1920, returned with him to Japan. Their story was dramatized for Japanese television as an asadora, or “morning drama”, entitled “Massan”. “Massan” was televised in fifteen-minute instalments on weekday mornings between September 2014 and March 2015 and was extremely popular. This talk will discuss “Massan” as a cultural phenomenon, setting it within the context of the history of Japanese-Scottish relations and that of television drama in general.
- Short Biography
Dr Ruth Herd is the Co-ordinator of Mandarin Chinese. She holds a D.Phil. in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford and two BA degrees, one in Chinese and one in Japanese, both from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. After commencing post-graduate studies at Oxford, she obtained a Master of Studies Diploma in Oriental Studies, for which she wrote a dissertation on the later dramatic works of Lao She. The topic of her D. Phil thesis was cross-cultural influence on the birth and development of Early Modern Drama in China and Japan.
Research interest: Literature and drama of China and Japan in the modern and early modern periods.