Masako Shirasu (白洲正子, Shirasu Masako) (January 7, 1910 – December 26, 1998) was a Japanese author and collector of fine arts. Her husband was the

diplomat A diplomat (from grc, δίπλωμα; romanized ''diploma'') is a person appointed by a state or an intergovernmental institution such as the United Nations or the European Union to conduct diplomacy with one or more other states or internati ...

Jirō Shirasu was a Japanese bureaucrat and businessman. Biography He was born in Ashiya in Hyogo Prefecture and studied at Clare College, Cambridge. During the Occupation he was a member of Shigeru Yoshida's government. He is particularly remembered in J ...

Biography

Shirasu was born in 1910 in the

Nagatachō is a district of Tokyo, Japan, located in Chiyoda Ward. It is the location of the Diet of Japan and the Prime Minister's residence (Kantei). The Supreme Court of Japan is located in neighboring Hayabusachō. Nagatachō is often used to refer ...

district of

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

. She was the daughter of a noble family which originally came from Satsuma. She began learning

Noh is a major form of classical Japanese dance-drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Developed by Kan'ami and his son Zeami, it is the oldest major theatre art that is still regularly performed today. Although the terms Noh and ' ...

at age four, and at fourteen she became the first known woman to perform a

play. She also studied in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, attending the Hartridge School in

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

during her teenage years. She returned to Japan in 1928 due to her father's financial troubles and married Jirō Shirasu the following year. As an adult, Shirasu became an avid collector of Japanese antiques, particularly

ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...

, and published a large number of books on the subject. She met author

Hideo Kobayashi was a Japanese author, who established literary criticism as an independent art form in Japan. Early life Kobayashi was born in the Kanda district of Tokyo, where his father was a noted engineer who introduced European diamond polishing techno ...

and art critic

Jiro Aoyama Jiro is the registered name used by Sun Microsystems for an extension to Java and Jini. Jiro as an industry initiative, along with an EMC initiative called "Wide Sky" were catalysts in the late nineties for a common interface to storage devices, ...

early in her career, and both men helped develop her career and her approach to art and antiques. She has discovered a designer

Issey Miyake was a Japanese fashion designer. He was known for his technology-driven clothing designs, exhibitions and fragrances, such as '' L'eau d'Issey'', which became his best-known product. Life and career Miyake was born on 22 April 1938 in Hirosh ...

, when he was about 20 and was unknown (according to Alex Kerr, Lost Japan, 2015). Her tastes tended towards simplicity and craftsmanship, and she was noted for finding beauty in everyday objects such as bowls and jars which had been expertly made. She also made a point of thoroughly visiting any region when studying its art, and she traveled across Japan to view and study Noh masks. In addition to antiques, she also explored nature's connection art, fashion, and

Japanese cuisine Japanese cuisine encompasses the regional and traditional foods of Japan, which have developed through centuries of political, economic, and social changes. The traditional cuisine of Japan (Japanese: ) is based on rice with miso soup and other ...

, and she wrote over sixty books in her lifetime. Shirasu died in 1998, thirteen years after her husband. Their house ''

Buaisō is the former home of post-war Japanese bureaucrat Jirō Shirasu and his wife Masako Shirasu, located in Machida, Tokyo, to the west of downtown Tokyo. The name was derived from an amalgamation of ''kanji'' for the former provinces of Musashi an ...

'' later became a museum. A special exhibition dedicated to her work and memory was organised by the

Miho Museum The Miho Museum is located southeast of Kyoto, Japan, in the Shigaraki neighborhood of the city of Kōka, in Shiga Prefecture. It is also the headquarters of the Shinji Shumeikai, a new religious group founded by Mihoko Koyama. History The ...

and

Nihon Keizai Shinbun ''The Nikkei'', also known as , is the flagship publication of Nikkei, Inc. (based in Tokyo) and the world's largest financial newspaper, with a daily circulation exceeding 1.73 million copies. The Nikkei 225, a stock market index for the Tok ...

in December 2000.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shirasu, Masako 1910 births 1998 deaths Japanese essayists Writers from Tokyo Wardlaw-Hartridge School alumni 20th-century essayists Antiques experts