South East Region – Lecture by Dr. Robert Morton “Josiah Conder’s Great Hobby”

Lecture by Dr. Robert Morton “Josiah Conder’s Great Hobby”

The next SE Zoom lecture (everyone welcome) will be on Saturday 2nd March at 2pm. The subject of the lecture will be ‘Josiah Conder – father of modern Japanese architecture – and Japanese garden enthusiast.  His great hobby’  and will be delivered by Dr Robert Morton who is a professor at Chuo University in Tokyo. Robert is a biographer and his books include A.B. Mitford and the Birth of Japan as a Modern State (Folkestone: Renaissance, 2017) and A Life of Sir Harry Parkes (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021).  His biography of Sir Rutherford Alcock is forthcoming from Amsterdam University Press and he is currently working on a life of the architect and Japanese garden enthusiast, Josiah Conder.  Josiah Conder (1852-1920) was a British architect who lived in Japan from 1877 until his death.  Although almost unknown in Britain as an architect, he was tremendously important to Japan, becoming known as the ‘father of modern Japanese architecture’.  He was also very interested in Japanese culture and in this talk we will focus on one of his greatest passions: the Japanese garden, which he helped turn into a craze in Edwardian Britain with his book Landscape Gardening in Japan.

If you wish to attend, please contact the secretary sesec@jgs.org.uk or go to the members area for a zoom registration link