I SPEAK TODAY as an old friend, perhaps the oldest fnend here except of course Michael who met Carmen before I did while they were both working at Bletchley. Others more knowledgeable than I will I know be speaking of her scholastic achievements as a researcher, writer and teacher.

I am also representing today the Japan Society whose revival after the war Carmen did so much to help, becoming the first editor of what was then called the Bulletin but which was later again called The Proceedings.

I want to concentrate in the few minutes allowed me about Carmen's genius for friendship. But before doing so I should like to say briefly how much we admire the great devotion which Michael showed to Carmen especially and not least in the way he cared for her and tended her in her long final illness. I would like to add that in my view Michael's contribution to Chinese studies over so many decades deserves to be much more widely recognized.

I first met Carmen over sixty years ago. I cannot now recall our first meeting. It was probably at SOAS (perhaps before I was posted to India in early 1945) but more likely when I was studying at SOAS in 1947-9 when Carmen was at Oxford doing PPE. It may well have been at the flat of Frank and Otome Daniels. Frank you will remember was the first Professor of Japanese at SOAS. I need hardly say that all the young men at SOAS in those days came under Carmen's spell. She was good-looking and had great personal charm as well as sincere humility.

I really got to know her well when she came out to Japan on a scholarship in late 1951 to do research at Keio University on Fukuzawa Yukichi, the famous Meiji scholar. I had only just arrived in Tokyo as a Second Secretary in the United Kingdom Liaison Mission to SCAP which became again the British Embassy in Apnl 1952 when the San Francisco Peace Treaty with Japan came into force. I was then shanng a house with two other bachelor Third Secretaries in the Embassy who were at that time language students.