{"id":2111,"date":"2023-09-01T09:35:44","date_gmt":"2023-09-01T08:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/edinburghuniversityarchives\/?p=2111"},"modified":"2023-09-05T13:23:20","modified_gmt":"2023-09-05T12:23:20","slug":"a-scottish-witness-of-the-great-kanto-earthquake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/edinburghuniversityarchives\/2023\/09\/01\/a-scottish-witness-of-the-great-kanto-earthquake\/","title":{"rendered":"A Scottish Witness of the Great Kant\u014d Earthquake"},"content":{"rendered":"

To mark the centenary of the Great Kant\u014d Earthquake of 1923, we are publishing a blog by Ash Mowat<\/strong>, a volunteer in the Civic Engagement Team, which explores the archives of a Scottish survivor. The composer Sheena Tennant Kendall was resident in Japan from 1919 to 1924 and lived through the catastrophe, describing its impact in her diary and photographing the ensuing devastation.<\/p>\n

Sheena Tennant Kendall<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sheena Tennant Kendall (1883-1974) was a Scottish composer who studied under the celebrated French music teacher and conductor Nadia Boulanger. Her musical works, of which Edinburgh University Library holds an archive (Coll-2055<\/a>), consist mostly of piano settings of poems by writers such as W. B. Yeats, Lord Tennyson, and W. E. Henley. In addition, she kept diaries of her travels in Germany, Japan, India, Egypt and elsewhere, which also document her experiments with photography.<\/p>\n

In July 1919, Sheena married Herbert Moorhouse Kendall (1881-1964), known as \u2018Ken\u2019. At the end of the year, the newly-weds travelled together to Kobe, Japan, where Ken worked for the British shipping company P&O.<\/p>\n\n\t\t