Tsuneko Marija Skušek kot posrednica japonske kulture na Slovenskem

After moving to Ljubljana in 1920, Tsuneko Kondō Kawase, later officially Marija Skušek, was the first promoter of Japanese culture in Slovenia, and many knew her as the “Ljubljana’s Japanese woman”. She learned Slovenian and lectured on Japan, Japanese women, and Japanese customs in many cities in the 1930s. Cultural institutions representing the Far East would ask her for help. She would lend objects from the collection she and her husband owned for exhibitions and explain the particular features of the exhibits on display. She advised the producers during the preparations for the performance of Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly in Ljubljana. When representatives from Japan visited Slovenia, Marija Tsuneko Skušek was usually invited as a translator. During the last years of her life, she worked on her domestic collection of mostly Chinese and Japanese artefacts and participated in the preparation of exhibitions in the central Slovenian museums, which opened shortly after her death.