TOKYO: Each year in southern Japan, dozens of people gather at a seafront shrine to honour a British botanist who never visited the country but is credited with revitalising its crucial seaweed industry.
But she carried out her most influential work as an unpaid research fellow, having lost her academic post after marriage because of the university's policy at the time against employing married women. Large Japanese and British flags are raised at the event, where a Shinto priest"gives thanks" to Drew-Baker, organiser Fumiichi Yamamoto, 86, told AFP.