EPISODE 16
November 4, 2021
In this episode, I have a kitchen-table style conversation with German-born, wise elder, Ingrid Bloser Martins. Ingrid is my neighbor in Estoril, Portugal, and she is someone I’ve come to know over the years as a woman whose diverse cultural experiences have afforded her a unique perspective. Our conversation focuses primarily on her insights into Japanese culture, as Japan is the longest posting her Portuguese husband was assigned as a diplomat, and it’s where they lived in the Shibuya center of Tokyo for 8 years in the early 1960s. During this time, Ingrid mastered the ancient art of ikebana or cut flower arranging. Later, as a teacher of the art, she promoted the exchange of Japanese and Portuguese cultures, which the Emperor of Japan recognized by honoring Ingrid with the Order of the Precious Crown.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Welcome to Women Who WaIk. I’m Louise Ross, writer and author of Women Who Walk the book, the inspiration for this podcast. And just as I did for the book here, I’ll be interviewing and unpacking the journeys of impressive, intrepid women who’ve made multiple international moves for work, for adventure, for love, for freedom – reminding us that women can do extraordinary things. You can find a transcript, with pictures, to each episode, and my books on my website, LouiseRoss.com.
Hello listeners. Welcome to Episode 16 of Women Who Walk. My guest today is Ingrid Bloser Martins.
[00:00:56] Louise: Born in Germany, seven years prior to the outbreak of World War II, Ingrid spent her early childhood in a village outside Hanover with her parents and siblings. Despite that ninety percent of Hanover’s city center was destroyed by American and British bombs, at the end of the war, Ingrid’s family moved to Hanover where she graduated from high school.
[00:01:24] Because the city was occupied by the British at this time, Ingrid often heard English being spoken, which inspired her to improve her fluency. In 1952, aged 18, Ingrid’s first country move was to England where she worked as an au pair for a British family in Brighton, and where she also certified as a German-to-English translator.
[00:01:51] Returning to Hanover and feeling dissatisfied, she made another country move this time to France, studying French literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. While in Paris, she met a Portuguese diplomat 20 years her senior, who was working with the Portuguese embassy accredited to NATO. The couple fell in love. However, Portugal prohibited its acting diplomats from marrying foreign women who did not speak Portuguese. Ingrid left Paris resuming her life in Hanover. But in 1958, her beloved traveled to Germany to ask for her hand. The couple married a year later, settling temporarily in Portugal, providing Ingrid the opportunity to learn Portuguese.
[00:02:44] In 1961 Ingrid’s husband, Armando was posted again to Paris. Three years later, he was posted to Tokyo as the Portuguese ambassador. The couple and their two children spent the next eight years in Japan. During this time, Ingrid developed a deep appreciation for Japanese culture learning and eventually teaching Ikebana, the ancestral art of Japanese flower arranging. As a teacher of the art, she promoted the exchange of Japanese and Portuguese cultures. Her contribution was later recognized when she was decorated by the Emperor of Japan, with the Order of the Precious Crown, which can only be received by a woman and foreign women of distinction.
[00:03:38] In the early ’70s, Armando’s next posting was to Rome and Ingrid became fluent in Italian, her fifth language. Nearing the end of his career, Armando’s final posting was to the Court of St. James in London. The family resided in the UK for several years before returning home to Portugal. Now retired, Armando began compiling his diplomatic writings and memoirs, but within seven years, Ingrid was widowed.
Thereafter, Ingrid dedicated herself to collating and editing Armando’s writing, resulting in the Portuguese publication of two books of his collected works, one of which was published in Japan. And in the early 2000s, Ingrid collaborated with a colleague on a coffee-table book featuring images of her Ikebana arrangements and her Japanese watercolors or sumi paintings, footnoted with her haiku, accompanied by poetic musings written by her colleague. Their book, Letters to Nobody was published in 2004.
[00:04:54] I do hope you enjoy my kitchen-table conversation with Ingrid, a wise elder whose diverse cultural experiences afford her a unique perspective. And by way of alleviating the anxiety Ingrid was experiencing leading up to the recording of this interview, ahead of time, she scripted some of her answers, which she reads from occasionally. At times Ingrid’s responses are complex as she’s translating her thoughts through several languages: German to Portuguese to English, so in a couple of spots, I’ve segued into a brief reflection or clarification.
[00:05:47] Welcome Ingrid! It’s quite an honor to have you on the podcast today. We’ve been neighbors for many years and over that time, we’ve come to know each other. And one thing I know about you is that you use email and WhatsApp to communicate with your children and grandchildren. You do have some uneasiness with technology, so how are you feeling with this very large microphone in front of you?
[00:06:10] Ingrid: Good morning Louise. I’m a bit nervous of course. And actually I thought I would receive you at my place to prepare a lovely cup of tea for both of us to be welcomed, together.
Ingrid at home in Portugal, surrounded by some of her collectibles from Japan
[00:06:24] Louise: That sounds delightful. And in fact, I have been to your home and had afternoon teas with the delicate green tea that you make. Now, as I mentioned, in my introduction, you spent your longest diplomatic posting in Tokyo where you developed a deep appreciation for Japanese culture. Is there a favorite memory, perhaps a scene or a picture you can paint for us from the neighborhood where you lived?
[00:06:50] Ingrid: To tell you the truth from the moment of disembarking in the Port of Yokohama, this was in 1964, every single day was so overwhelming with exotic enchantment, as well as with our colorful living quarter, elegantly designed houses and Japanese gardens, with the children dressed in very colorful cotton kimonos. Today, this Shibuya center, actually we see many times in our television programs, with many people running to-and-fro, but it was much calmer at that time. Tokyo was considered the largest worldwide with 10 million inhabitants. Portugal at that time had 10 million, the whole country all together.
[00:07:47] Louise: Twenty years after World War II, you’re living in Tokyo, with your husband and family. Were you aware of remnants of the 1945 bombing of Tokyo by US Army Air Forces, uh, which apparently destroyed about 16-square-miles of that city?
[00:08:15] Ingrid: Michel Montaigne, the French philosopher from the end of the 16th century commented, “War is a pompous human action.” The German population had suffered enormously, we still mourn our lost soldiers and civilians, but Japan experienced the atrocious horrors of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, places I visited to see with my own eyes surviving victims in their hospitals. You may think time helps to heal, but history may never be forgotten.
[00:08:57] Louise: Despite having this acute awareness of war and the horrors that humanity can inflict upon itself, in contrast, while in Tokyo, you became a skilled Ikebana artist creating the most serenely beautiful arrangements, which were later captured along with your Japanese watercolors and haiku, in a beautiful collaborative book, which you kindly leant to me and which I’ve gone through and noted the beauty of the arrangements. Can you tell us about Ikebana? What is it about this art form that you were drawn to and why?
[00:09:37] Ingrid: Probably it was intuition. In Germany only now they are declaring our generation, the forgotten generation. We had to struggle for our own emotional balance. And today I am convinced, if you believe, as I do, that in order to survive the spiritually destructive forces of our commercial and technological advancement and dependence, we must restore our real dimension so we may trust in wider greatness than ourselves, like nature, for example, existing already before us. It is that what happened to me.
[00:10:27] The fine art of Ikebana is not an oil painting or a museum piece. It is an expression of life, and here nature is our teacher. Kado, that means the way of flowers, for example, arranging the composition, the melody emanating from a single flower and extending to form an orchestra of spring flowers, to bloom soon in the imagination by any onlooker, leads me to be able to step away from many of our everyday life concerns in order to understand my purpose of life.
[00:11:15] The same values accounts for sumi painting and haiku poetry. Dao is a most considerable conception of Japanese mentality. You have judo; you have kado; you have chado, that is a way of having tea; and you have shodo, that is the way of painting sumi, the Japanese painting with the Chinese ink. In Japan, all arts are to be understood like a way which embraces the spirituality of a culture. Our book, Letters for Nobody, illustrate with Ikebana, sumi painting and haiku in order to create an art of itself, a combined beauty of three different elements in one harmonious concept. An intimate alliance, which could be understood as the seat liberating our emotions.
[00:12:32] Louise clarifies: As a survivor of the destructive forces of war and now as an elder witnessing a rapidly changing world driven by technology, Ingrid reflects that “we must restore our real dimension so we can trust in something greater, such as nature.”
[00:12:53] Nature, she is suggesting is spiritually healing, and it’s why she was intuitively drawn to Ikebana. She mentions kado, that’s K A D O, which was originally a Chinese Buddhist custom, the contemplative of practice of studying nature as it is. When kado was introduced to Japan in the 16th century, it became ikebana or the artful arranging of cut flowers. Ingrid also mentions the “way of flowers” and way in this context refers to the Taoist concept of harmony.
[00:13:36] She uses poetic metaphor to describe the harmony of an arrangement of spring flowers saying it’s akin to a musical composition with the potential to transport the onlooker beyond mundane concerns so that we may glimpse our life’s purpose. She goes on to say that ikebana, sumi painting and haiku poetry embody the same values and that in her collaborative book, Letters to Nobody combining these three different elements into one harmonious concept, affords readers an emotionally freeing and spiritually uplifting experience.
[00:14:34] Louise: Could you say the name of your book in Portuguese for me?
[00:14:38] Ingrid: In Portuguese. Yes, it is uh, Cartas a Ninguém.
[00:14:42] Louise: You know, I mentioned it to someone and I said that you also included your haiku under some of your images of your ikebana and your watercolors, and they were very impressed by the idea of you creating haiku in Portuguese. Did it come naturally to you to, to write haiku in Portuguese?
[00:15:03] Ingrid: I like haiku since a long time. I studied it in Japan. And there are many translations today, mostly in English, in German and French. And there are many artists, uh, attracted to this very short, very dense kind of, uh, composing thought in a poetic way because they have only five and seven and five syllabus each line. It’s a very special kind of composition. As the book was published in Portuguese, I naturally composed a poem in Portuguese. But I composed already more. I hope to make another publication in German and in English.
[00:15:48] Louise: Now you mentioned German, and English, and of course you speak Portuguese, and I know you also speak French and Italian. So it seems that each country that you’ve lived in, you’ve been able to pick up the language. Is that true?
[00:16:02] Ingrid: Yes, that’s quite true because my thought was that if I come to a foreign country, the first thing is my obligation to learn the language. Because if you don’t know the language, you can never know really the people. So I thought it was my obligation coming to a foreign country. So I even speak Japanese.
[00:16:23] Louise: I didn’t realize that. So that’s number six. That’s your sixth language. Was it difficult? It seems so complicated.
[00:16:30] Ingrid: Yes, it is very complicated. If you want to write it and to read it; this, I omitted. I only learned how to speak it. And that actually was very easy because I think the phonetic part, Japanese is very easy to learn. And the construction of the phrases, if you get it once, it is easy. They are, they are very correct and very direct in their addressing to something or to some people.
[00:17:00] And my Japanese is a very curious Japanese because my children were very small. I sent them to a Japanese kindergarten and, uh, they, they learned Japanese. It was their first language, like their maternal language. At home we spoke Portuguese and German, but in the kindergarten they had to speak Japanese. And I picked up the kindergarten Japanese, and the kindergarten Japanese became my language.
[00:17:30] Louise: That’s rather sweet. I hear that from some of the mums here in Portugal who have children in school that they’ve learned Portuguese because of their children. Yeah. Yeah. Great way to learn the language. I want to come full circle actually, when you were 18 and you left Hanover, uh, you went to the UK to be an au pair with a British family, because you wanted to improve your English, which you’d already started to, to learn in school. Were you well-received in Britain as a German after the war, or was there some hostility that you experienced?
[00:18:10] Ingrid: English people are very kind and very understanding and in general, uh, they received me very well. But after I went to France, to Paris to go to university, there I felt much more hostility. But with the time, uh, I tried to smooth it down. But in England I didn’t feel it. I have been very well received.
[00:18:35] Louise: That’s good to hear. And then coming back to your ikebana, you were teaching that and, uh, for quite some time, and it also became a vehicle through which you were able to promote the exchange of Japanese and Portuguese cultures and which you were decorated for by the Emperor of Japan. Gosh, what an honor. Can you talk us through that experience?
[00:19:00] My husband was a scholar of Japanology and he ended his life as professor at university, after being retired from the foreign office. We both were quite knowledgeable about Portuguese – Japanese history, and we spoke reasonably well the Japanese language. My husband’s premature death involved me in a kind of inheritance, promoting an old alliance of 450 years ago when Portuguese-Japanese relations were settled in 1543 by sailors, traders, and missionaries on the small island of Tokushima. Today I could say, I was very much honored indeed, that in the court of his majesty, the Emperor of Japan, my modest contribution was recognized.
[00:20:02] Louise: You were recognized by Japan’s Emperor, as an ambassadoress really, in your own right.
[00:20:18] Louise reflects: Despite the honor awarded her by the Emperor of Japan, Ingrid tends to downplay her personal achievements. And in response to my comment about being recognized as an ambassadoress in her own right, she mentioned again the French Renaissance philosopher, Michel Montaigne, saying that his writings had augmented her joy for life and her understanding that human relations are the primary seat of knowledge.
[00:20:52] And then by way of explaining, she told me a story of two men who greatly inspired her. One of course is her husband, Armando, and the other is a Portuguese literary figure, Wenceslau De Moraes, who lived in Japan in the early 20th century and whose literary work Ingrid studied, because he wrote about the history, arts, customs, and the beauty of the Japanese landscape.
[00:21:21] And it is these two men and their life’s work who became the source of a comparative essay that Ingrid wrote and published in Portugal. Its title, translated from Portuguese, Portugal and Japan, Armando Martins Janeira, and Wenceslau De Moraes, Two Personalities, Different Humans. She then briefly mentioned that since her husband’s death, over 30 years ago, she has worked to ensure that his legacy of books and papers and collected treasures from his diplomatic postings, were donated to libraries and museums, and that she always considered her efforts a means to honor his memory, but never worth any merit for herself because of her love for her husband and for Portugal, the country she calls home.
[00:22:29] Louise: You’re now 86, a petite, elegant, always beautifully coiffed and out-fitted octogenarian who speaks six languages and who’s lived a culturally enriching life in six countries, and I know you have an unpublished memoir that you’ve been working on for many years. What are the insights, perhaps the pearls of wisdom you’ve documented in your memoir that you hope to pass on to others?
Ingrid always wears her hair in a beautiful French roll or elegantly pinned bun
[00:22:56] Ingrid: I started writing like a relaxing talk with myself. This German-born woman, a witness of the Second World War, turning Portuguese by marriage, then searching for being accepted into a different society. By now already privileged with 70 years of peace, I felt the urge to explain my historical experience to my children. The elder we get, we become the last witness of this generation.
[00:23:36] I feel German and I feel Portuguese, but I too feel European, with privileges of my very personal cultural education, which gave me opportunities for enormous enrichment. Suddenly I felt the need to communicate, to unveil new discoveries of my own origins beyond the past.
[00:24:02] You remember in Portugal, we experienced a military revolution after almost 50 years in 1974. In Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the iron curtain separated the families of the same country by an absurd ideology with the intention to destroy a nation under an inhumane regime. We all realize how much we do need new ways of meditation. And we reflect: Why peace is better than war? And why is Liberty of the press better than dictatorship? And if we continue, why is democracy- no doubt very complex, but more righteous?
[00:24:57] I tried to find the answer in peaceful family portraits in my living room. As I imagined them perfect, I searched in myself to discover my destiny. Along the years, the wisdom of maturity teaches us to overcome dreams we cannot fulfill. Life after all is a manner and a way.
[00:25:26] To finish, I can’t omit the words I found in my husband’s diary: life is the only chance to be in this beautiful world; human beings only real possessions.
[00:25:43] Louise: Thank you. One thing I want to ask you, you mentioned several Japanese traditions and, uh, when we started, you said your preference would be to host a tea at your home. And, and then I said, well, of course I’ve had a number of delicious teas at your home. Could you tell me a little about Japanese tea ceremony? It’s something that’s so unique. What’s the philosophy behind that?
[00:26:15] Ingrid: Well, all these Japanese arts, the most profound philosophy behind is the Zen Buddhism. Uh, it’s a very quiet way of being and of dismantling yourself, your mentality of a lot of preoccupation to become very calm. Very quiet and very much at ease and empty, to earn new energy. I have tried to exercise it myself many times in small sessions of meditation and have been to temples in Japan to participate in long meditations in the presence of Japanese priests.
[00:27:02] But, uh, the tea ceremony started in Japan, just having a cup of tea in a very quiet atmosphere. You leave the world of outside behind you. You close the door. You are inside a beautiful room covered with Tatami, the rice mat and you have a cup of tea. It takes about one hour to have a cup of tea. The hostess prepares very carefully the tea for you, the tea on very beautiful, always handmade materials, like the tea cups, the teapot. The lady who offers you the tea is dressed in a lovely kimono. She has a beautiful ikebana in front of her for her guests to look at. And the tea is distributed to the guests with a special Japanese sweet, which is very sweet. The most popular one is Yokan. It’s made of red beans with sugar, like a hard little piece. You eat it before, because the tea is called Matcha. It’s very concentrated powder of green tea, which has a slightly bitter taste. And to endure the bitterness you have first the, the sweet.
[00:28:24] The most important part in the tea ceremony is for you to have the tea very quietly, very consciously, every sip of it. And after you have deposed your empty cup in front of you, you admire it like a piece of art. And after, if you are very interested in looking at your teacup, the hostess gives you all the other utensils she has been using before for your appreciation.
[00:28:53] This process takes about an hour. She cleans the tea cup in front of you because it was strongly influenced by the Portuguese missionaries when they introduced Christianism in Japan in the 16th century. The Portuguese had friendly relationship with these Tea Masters who were so interested in the missionaries and assisting religious ceremonies that they influenced, for example, cleaning the tea cup after you have finished your tea, it’s like cleaning the wine glass, the priest has in the Catholic church after he made the communion. So, the Japanese tea ceremony doesn’t have at all a religious background, but the Tea Masters for a long time, they tried to hide it because they wanted to keep their treasure of the tea ceremony, very Japanese.
[00:29:59] But now they came to the conclusion, because it has been studied by foreigners as well and they confess, yes, it was a Catholic influence. But of course, tea ceremony is not Catholic, it is very typical Japanese art, uh, and I have learned it myself, but I never became a professor because it is extremely difficult. You have to learn many gestures and many rules and to be perfect, you need, for my taste, you need to be Japanese and to be born Japanese and to produce it in a very Japanese way, dressed in a Japanese kimono. Of course it’s performed by men and by ladies.
[00:30:46] Louise: You actually answered one other query I had, which is, is there any similar ritual in the Western world? And it sounds like Catholic mass might be something similar, but the point of it is, is to aid one in turning inward and creating a quiet space within the psyche to contemplate. So a little like the Buddhist concept of empty mind.
[00:31:11] Ingrid: In former times the soldiers or the Samurai, they took all their participates, first for a special tea ceremony session for everybody to be quiet, to know inner world and the outer world before they go outside to fight for the Liberty of their Lord or their country or their people.
[00:31:37] Yesterday, I heard in the Portuguese news that Portuguese factory owners, they ask their employees to come to joke with each another, because it is very good for young people to have a good laugh after they will work much better. So in Japan, probably, they will not laugh because they are not very much to laugh, but they will have a tea ceremony on the top floor of their building in a big enterprise with a thousand or two thousand or three thousand employees and where they have tea ceremonies very regularly, and the employees may assist the tea ceremony and after go back to their work. So it is their point of gathering and of getting new energy and relaxation. People work many more hours than we do and many more days during the year than we do, so they need this kind of relaxation.
[00:32:40] Louise: Yes, yes… Well, this was a wonderful conversation and a fascinating tour through Japanese culture, thank you so much, and I look forward to coming over and having another cup of tea with you.
[00:32:53] Ingrid: Thank you very much for your kindness to talk on many diverse aspects of my life.
[00:33:00] Louise: Thank you for listening today. And so you don’t miss future episodes with more impressive, intrepid women do subscribe on your favorite podcast provider or on my YouTube channel, Women Who Walk Podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review Women Who Walk on either Apple Podcasts or Podchaser, I’ve linked to them both in the transcript of this episode, on my website, LouiseRoss.com.