Raging Tempest Sivaramakrishnan, K; Davis, Richard L
Fire and Ice,
12/2016
Book Chapter
For historians of the Five Dynasties, the imperial families generally struck a contemptible image: “their perversion of morality was utterly deplorable,” writes Ouyang Xiu.¹ The Liang founder died at ...the hands of his own bastard son, while acts of fratricide dogged several autonomous states to the south.² The ethics for the ruling class fell far below the hoi polloi due chiefly to the corrosive effects of power and wealth in tandem. Yet the Shatuo ruling house under Li Keyong lived by moral standards that surpassed even the best polities of the era, at least during his lifetime.
Keyong’s widow, the
Dorothy Bouchier was a poet, composer, teacher, author and translator, who was bilingual in English and Japanese and bridged English and Japanese culture. She was so in tune with Japanese culture ...that one of her mother’s Japanese friends described her as ‘Japanese wearing a Western skin’.
Dorothy Guyver Britton (Lady Bouchier), who died on 25 February 2015 aged ninety-three, was born on Valentine’s Day (14 February) 1922. She had been due to visit London in early March to make a presentation to the Japan Society on her newly published memoir, which is memorably entitledRhythms, Rites and Ritualsand is
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