Hi, ladies!!! A very, very happy new year to you all, my precious friends. I hope you had a wonderful New Year’s Day and made a splendid start for the year.
I spend New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in Ohita, drinking, eating, chatting endlessly till late in the night. Everybody except me was so tough and vital, feeling no exhaustion and hangover. Amazing, isn’t it!!!
Anyway our New Year’s festivity is over, and I will try to go back to my normal research mode, which is a bit difficult after a few continuous party nights. But fortunately the book delivered a couple of days before my trip to Ohita was discovered to be quite useful in my research and I am extremely happy about it.
I will let you know what it is later on. But here is part 10.
(10)
In 1890, Kate Youngman and Seishin Ohtsuka (1845-1926) agreed to rescue a leprosy patient hospitalized in a Catholic hospital in Koyama, Gotenba, Shizuoka Prefecture.
Let me tell you something about the Christine mission work promoted in Koyama, Gotenba. Foreign missionaries began to do their propagation in various places in the prefecture in 1874 or 75 after the notice board announcing the prohibition of Christianity preach was removed in 1873.
In March, 1880, some Christians in Koyama and James H. Ballagh, an elder one, got together for discussion and decided to build Koyama Preach House in the foxtail millet field owned by Kihei Tsuchiya, a local Christian farmer, by borrowing 120 yen from the USA Reformed Church.
Six years later, in 1886, Youngman built a cottage in Koyama, possibly close to the preach house, and spent summer helping the staff of the house doing the mission work in that rural area.
In April, 1889, Youngman, Ohtsuka and his wife Kane (1855-1946), whose elder sister was the mother of Tsuneko Gauntlett (1873-1953), a social reformer, visited Koyama together, and Youngman and James H. Ballagh discussed the work of Ohtsuka, who passed the missionary examination after being baptized by D. Thompson and studying at James Curtis Hepburn (1815-1911), a Presbyterian medical missionary. They decided to have Ohtsuka work as an assistant missionary of the Reformed Church at Koyama and Gotenba.
Ohtsuka’s father was a doctor employed by the shogun government and the lord of Honda Mima-saka-no-mori (???), and appeared to be familiar with or at least interested in medicine or various medical treatments. (According to a web article, he was a doctor, which is not proved at the moment.) Followed by his success in the missionary examination, he went to Tori Island on his own, leaving his wife Kane, in 1888, but became sick and returned to his wife at home, possibly in Shizuoka where he was born and raised, in the following year 1889, before he came to Koyama.
Azalea, thank you so much for your interest in my writing about Kate Youngman and I will try to answer your questions in the very near future. These are your questions:
If you don't mind, I would like you to explain why the Japanese primary school eased up for poor children, why didn't she ouycried about the policy and how could she establish other specialized school.
It’s a beautiful day today, isn’t it? Have a lovely Saturday afternoon, my precious friends. Bye, for now.
I'm glad to hear all of you are having a peaceful New Year. My family went out for shopping. I’m peacefully working on essay writing. Since having finished checking the newsletters downloaded from the website of Poole Gakuin, I've been making Katherine Tristram's timeline.
A Brief History of Katherine Alice Salvin Tristram (1858-1948)
Katherine Alice Salvin Tristram was born to Canon Henry Baker Tristram (11 May 1822- 8 March 1906) of Durham and Eleanor Mary Bowlby (10 March 1821- 8 March 1903).
H. B. Tristram, a Doctor of Divinity (D. D.) and an ornithologist, wrote Rambles in Japan: The Land of the Rising Sun (1895) after traveling the country with his daughter who had a good command of Japanese by then.
On April 29, 1858 Tristram was born in Castle Eden, Durham. The parish register records that she was baptized in Easington, Durham.
From 1873 to 1876, she studies at Cheltenham Ladies College.
In 1882, She became the first Resident Lecturer at Westfield College (est. 1882), where she read for her degree (B. A. from the University of London) while teaching .
After being accepted by CMS on February 7, 1888, she came to Japan and became the Principal of pūru jogakko (Bishop Poole Memorial Girls’ School) in Osaka.
Hearing the news about the Noubi Earthquake of 1891, Tristram and her students visited and helped the victims.
In 1929, she and Anna Maria Tapson (1888 – 1940 in Japan) established Garden Home, a tuberculosis sanatorium for women, in Nakano, Tokyo. Both worked for the sanatorium.
In 1931, She was awarded the Ranju Hosyo (Medal with Blue Ribbon) by the Japanese government.
Hi, ladies!!! It’s Sunday, January 4, 2009, today, and it’s been lovely and sunny, albeit a bit chilly in the morning, hasn’t it?
I will try to answer the questions given by Azalea. Her questions are:
If you don't mind, I would like you to explain why the Japanese primary school eased up for poor children, why didn't she ouycried about the policy and how could she establish other specialized school.
In the early Meiji years, the Japanese government required the parents of school children to pay tuition and other expense fees, simply because of the government’s lack of fund to fabricate school buildings, employ teachers and prepare textbooks for the children.
However, the school fees were a tremendous burden to the parents, because the fees were, possibly, much larger than the ones for nearby temple schools some of them paid for their children’s education in the Edo period. Some other parents never expected to send their children to school, because they never thought their offspring needed school education to make a living.
On the other hand, toward the end of the Edo period, 50 to 60 percent of males and 85 percent of females were illiterate (Oku, 427), and thereby the government, which was forced to realize how much far behind from Western countries Japan was in various aspects of society, felt a strong need and determination, a few years after the Meiji restoration, to raise the literacy rate of the general public in order to produce hopefully high quality nationals.
Possibly the idea of the production of high quality citizens, which was conceivably one of the important bases of the establishment of a new nation, was proposed by some Christian missionaries from Western countries. The Reverend Guido Herman Fridolin Verbeck (1830-1898), an American missionary from the Dutch Reformed Church in America, was one of them.
Verbeck, arriving in Nagasaki on November 7, 1859, taught English using the Bible, politics and economics in the Western countries, mainly to government officials. Some of them who came all the way to learn these subjects from him were Taneomi Soejima, Shigenobu Okuma, Hirobumi Ito, Toshimichi Okubo and many other individuals who occupied important posts in the new government.
On February 13, 1869, he received a letter from the Meiji government (1868-1912) ordering or asking him to go up to Tokyo and work for the creation of universities. In this fashion, he became deeply involved in the setting up of school systems of modern Japan.
In June 1869, Verbeck submitted a document titled Brief Sketch to Shigenobu Okuma, one of his former students in Nagasaki, suggesting the Japanese government what it should do to promote the westernization of the nation.
Two years later, in 1871, Tomomi Iwakura realized how important and significant Verbeck’s suggestion and attempted to materialize his study and observation trip to the USA and European countries. A tour group consisting of a variety of politicians, officials and individuals headed by Tomoni Iwakura left Yokohama for the USA on November 12, 1871, for about two years.
They made a number of visits to miscellaneous schools in the USA and other countries, which helped them to understand what school education was and to consitute the Japanese school education system.
Gakusei was issued almost ten months after the launch of their journey to the Western World.
Gakusei, the grand plan of school education system of Japan, prescribed an eight-year primary school education for children of both sexes, requesting the parents to pay for the education cost.
Obviously, from the realistic point of view, the eight-year education was too long, since the parents, especially destitute ones, were rather ignorant of the necessity of education for their offspring, and particularly the parents of daughters of school ages were not so familiar with egalitarian education.
Thus, the Gakusei plan did not go as smoothly as expected or hoped, and thus the Japanese primary education system was forced to go through diversified reforms, as already explained in my writing.
Eventually school buildings were constructed throughout the country, though a number of schoolrooms were set up in local temples. It is said that some local wealthy families made financial contributions for the construction of school buildings in their school districts.
The reduction of the government expenditure for the erection of school buildings logically led the government to offer free education to school children.
Kate M. Youngman founded a variety of schools, as examined in my previous writing, simply because the exchange rate was favorable to the US dollar at that time, which enabled her to rent some rooms for school education, hire Japanese teachers, and provide whatever was necessary for education.
I do not know whether I properly answered the questions asked by Azalea, but if my answers were inadequate or insufficient, please let me know, preferably before my leaving for Sydney on 14th of this month.
I hope all of you are enjoying your new year holiday, my precious friends. Rose is coming to my place tomorrow to discuss her essay project. I hope all of you are enjoying your essay writing and you will hold group meetings as scheduled in January and February. Bye for now…
In 1890, Kate Youngman and Seishin Ohtsuka who was engaged in mission work in Koyama, Shizuoka Prefecture, came to an agreement to found a hospital and put Yae Tsushima, a protestant leprosy patient hospitalized in Fukusei Hospital, a Catholic medical facility, since there was no Protestant medical institution that took any leprosy sufferers. Tsushima was eager to leave the hospital as her faith did not go along with its Catholicism, and felt even some fear and exasperation against it. It is stated that she ran out of Fukusei Hospital to the Preach House, which was about 500 meters away, as a crow flies.
In 1894 (Meiji 27), Youngman established Ihai-en, a medical institution, at Meguro, Tokyo, and Yae moved to there from Koyama, Gotenba, by kago palanquin during the night so that nobody noticed the leprosy patient traveling from Shizuoka to Tokyo.
I hope you enjoyed reading this short episode about Yae Tsushima, my lovely friends. Bye for now…
Hi, ladies!!! It’s Monday, January 5, 2009, today, and it’s been a warm and sunny day, hasn’t it? This mild weather is expected to continue tomorrow, according to the NHK evening weather forecast, and I am very happy about it.
This morning I went to a fabric shop to buy some cloth to make a short curtain for the kitchen window. There were a variety of curtain fabric and I chose polyester material with some pretty rose embroideries on it. Actually I wanted to get embroidered lace material and luckily I found something I was just looking for, but it was made in France and was too expensive to get: it cost almost 9000 yen per meter. The one I got cost only a little over 1000 yen per meter, which was quite reasonable to me. I made a curtain after supper this evening and replaced the old one with the new one, which is very refreshing.
In the early afternoon Rose came to my place to discuss her essay scheme, and we had a brilliant time together, talking about various topics at a tea break. I was very impressed by her story about the wedding celebration of her eldest son, who got married last month in the USA. He is 27, she remarked.
Here is part 12. I hope you enjoy my account of Kate M. Youngman.
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Now I think I have to explain Kozen-sha, a charity group, established by Youngman at the age of 35, when she was still working at Graham Seminary, on November 11, 1877, four years after her arrival in Japan. She gathered ten seminary students of an age group from 15 to 20, some of whom might have been married, for the purpose of helping a girl named Sen Matsumoto of about eight years of age from a destitute family so that she could live decently and go to school. At the December meeting in the same year they decided to hold a bazaar to raise a fund for her living and educational expenses, and asked students of the seminary to bring some handicrafts they made and some items they sewed so as for the members to sell at the bazaar. They also held Saturday school for the children of fishermen, who could not attend school, helping their fathers and mothers in fishing in the sea.
The charity members were not directly involved in the management of the primary schools Youngman established, but held Christmas celebrations, decorating the rooms, preparing presents for the pupils and giving hymn signing lessons to them. All the expenses for the Christmas festivity were covered by their membership fees.
Fourteen years later, in 1891, Youngman, who had resigned from the administration of all her schools, felt some need to do something to her charity group consisting of only women.
All the members were by then married and were not able to attend regular meetings due to their domestic responsibilities. In addition, they were virtually becoming unable to continue their activities facing the opposition of their families against the Christian charity work.
The incapacitation of the members to join Youngman was, in actuality, strengthened after the Japanese government concentrated on recreating the country on the basis of nationalism from about 1886 onward. The government, intending to decrease the Christian influence on the nation, issued in 1899 the Private School Ordinance and the Official Instruction on the Separation of Religion from Education, prohibiting Bible lessons and Christian praying at private schools. Under these circumstances, antipathy against Christianity arose among the general public.
I hope all of you are having a lovely Monday evening, my precious friends. Goodnight to you all…
Hello! How are you? I wonder how you manage to do a lot of things in a day, Plum. You’re, indeed, exceptional!
I’m organizing research materials collected so far.
History of NSKK
Missionaries sent by the organizations affiliating Church of England were accepted by Nippon Seikokai (NSKK) (est. 1887), which was a united organization of three Anglican missionary societies: the CMS, SPG, and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. Accordingly, the NSKK is known as the Anglican Church in Japan.
In the middle of 19th century, the Japanese government was publicly opposed to Christianity although male missionaries had been coming from Western countries. The first male CMS missionary reached Okinawa in 1845. He belonged to the Loochoo Naval Mission.
In 1958, Lord Elgin’s Treaty was agreed upon between Britain and Japan. Its principal features were equivalent to the Japan-US Friendship and Trade Treaty. Because of these unequal treaties, the Japanese government had to open five ports to trade. The next year, the Episcopal Church in the United States sent Reverend Channing Moore Williams, the first Anglican missionary, to Japan. Later, he became the first Anglican Bishop of Japan.
When the CMS sent Reverend George Ensor to Nagasaki in 1969, he saw an official notice board (kosatsu or takafuda) which prohibited Christianity. In 1872, the notice boards were removed.
The Japanese government reluctantly began to accept woman missionaries. One hundred and two single or widowed woman missionaries came to Japan before 1910. The number of woman missionaries who came to Japan from 1875 to 1889 is nineteen. During the next decade, it is 46. In the first decade of 20th century, it is 37. Victorian women missionaries who came to Japan in the earlier stage were involved in either school management or hospital management. Some of them established institutions. They are all famous for their jobs and they reached Japan before 1890. Some of them managed sanatoriums.
The design of the blog has a bit changedm hasn't it? It is so refreshing. It has been very fine. I was so impressed with Plum's writing. You are so amazing.
I read Rose's son got mariied. Congratulations, Rose. It must be the happiest time in his life and I imagine that Rose feel relieved.
Hi, ladies!!! It’s Tuesday, January 6, 2009, today, and it’s unfortunately a bit cloudy and chilly, and occasionally windy (oh, I hate the wind), in the morning, but I hope it will warm up in the afternoon.
I am leaving for Sydney on Wednesday next week, that is, 14th. There is no direct flight connecting Nagoya to Australia, and thus I have to fly to Narita first by JAL and then take a Quantus flight to Sydney, arriving at 7: 55 a. m. in Sydney. I have to wait at Narita for about 5 hours, and I will go to a massage shop in the airport building, which I did on the way back from England last April.
I will continue to write my account of three missionaries until 13th but will discontinue from 14th until returning to Japan at the end of February. I wish I could write, but since I will not take any of my research materials to Sydney I won’t be able to. The reason why I go there is seeing my daughter and her family as well as looking after her two little sons. There is no point in bringing any of my study documents since I will be just a granny, very busy changing nappies, bathing her newborn baby, taking out her one and a half year old infant for a walk, etc. etc.
I am looking forward to seeing my daughter but at the same time I am VERY looking forward to coming back to Nagoya to resume my research in spring. Funny, isn’t it?
Here is part 13.
(13)
In 1891 (Meiji 24), Kate Youngman, after realizing clearly that the members of Kozen-sha, who were all female, were unable to continue their charity work due to their domestic duties, their families’ disapproval of their philanthropic activities, and their concern about some degree of hostility from the general public against their endeavor and occupation, admitted 11 Japanese men to Kozen-sha. Then, she and her new members established three departments of propagation, education and charity. Then she sorted out all her present work to these departments, clarifying and distinguishing her obligation and their ones.
In the following year, in 1892 (Meiji 25), Kozen-sha opened a preach house at Kamakura, did some rescue work for sufferers from the Nobi Earthquake that occurred in central Japan in 1891, and approved Youngman’s proposal of founding a facility for leprosy patients.
In 1894, at 52, Kate Youngman created an orphanage at her private residence at B6 in Tsukiji, which was called Charity Home (Jizen-kan), and accepted girls who were parentless or were sold for prostitution, as part of Kyofu-kai (founded in 1886 with Kajiko Yajima as the first head) activity.
On the other hand, Kozen-sha was sent 200 pounds (presently about 5,130,000 yen) from the Mission to Lepers of England followed by Kate Youngman’s letter to it asking a monetary contribution and founded Ihai-en at Meguro Village, Tokyo, accepting three patients including Yae Tsushima and appointing Seishin Ohtsuka (1846-1926) and his wife Kane (1855-1946) as supervisors.
Probably I haven’t told you anything about Fukusei Hospital in Koyama, Gotenba, Shizuoka Prefecture. Next time I will mention it briefly.
I hope you enjoyed reading my account of Kate M. Youngman, my lovely friends. See you tomorrow, bye-bye.
I’ve been playing an important role of mother and granny for these two weeks, almost preparing meals, cleaning the rooms and shopping for groceries.
Tomorrow we’re going to baby-sit almost three-year-old grandson, Manato while his parents are going to a new house to receive and arrange furniture and other miscellaneous things sent from U.S. It’ll be a crucial work for them to start getting ready for a new life in Okazak.
Hoping Manato will have a good time with his grandpa and grandma tomorrow.
I’d like to write about relief activities after the great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, which motivated Takeko Kujo to build Asoka hospital, currently one of the greatest medical centers in Japan.
The great Kanto Earthquake drove Takeko to serve those who suffered from devastated earthquake at the peril of her life. She experienced a burning hell. Extraordinary heat made diamond reduced to ashes inspite of being stored in a doubled fireproof safe at Hatori jewelry store. Tukiji Hongwanji where Takeko lived was burned to the ground. Takeko took part in relief activities.
The Buddhist Women’s Association with the membership of 500,000 or 600,000 across the country launched relief works with Nishi Honganji in Kyoto. It built a strong system to relieve victims in the disaster-stricken area. Piles of donations and relief supplies were inundated from approximately three thousand of local Buddhist Women’s Associations.
“Emergency Relief Branch Office” was set up at a relief headquarters in the ruins of Tsukiji Hongwanji that had been ravaged by fire. Takeko, a head of BWA, played a leading role, bearing social conscience to serve in mind.
First Takeko organized a “children’s school” made by a big makeshift tent donated by an army division at Ueno park. Children were taught and taken care of while their devastated parents were busy restoring after the earthquake.
I'll continue to write, so good-by for now, my precisous friends.
It's been clear and fine today, but very chilly unexpectedly.
I went to Plum’s house yesterday afternoon to discuss Mieko Kamiya who I’m trying to write about. This is the first time for me to write a research essay and I had no idea how to develop the contents. I have been struggling and confusing. After reading my writing about Mieko, Plum asked me a lot of questions and gave me useful and precise advice. I learned that I needed to give a definition of word which was not clear for readers, which might not be necessary if it was a Japanese essay. And I also knew that I had to always ask myself why she did so and explain it clearly, not to write the fact itself. It is too difficult for me to write this kind of essay and I became more uneasy and confusing. I’m not sure if I can do it. But Plum encouraged me and made me feel like to say “Yes, we can!” (I mean “Yes, I can with Plum’s help.) Plum, thank you so much for your generosity and consideration.
Mieko Kamiya was born into a well-educated family, but hard time in her childhood over her parents' quarrels, and mastered French, English, German, Greek, Latin as well as Japanese and she had tremendous talents in various field after overcame tuberculosis. She was a writer, translator, professor of Kobe Women’s College and Tsuda College, psychiatrist and a mother of two children at the same time. I’m trying to focus on her as a psychiatrist for the Hansen’s disease patients. She was very mysterious person because of her abnormal talent possibly and it seems very difficult to trace one of her achievements.
I will stop here now. By for now, my precious friends.
Hi, ladies!!! It’s Wednesday, January 7, 2009, today. Alas, how fast time flies!!! Without me knowing, the first week of the year 2009 has already passed. We have now 358 days left this year. I wonder what I can do for the rest of the year. It is truly challenging to me.
I have been struggling to find out any clue about when and how Neville Edmund Cornwall Legh, the brother of Mary H. Cornwall Legh, died in these approximately two years. According to the family tree, he died in 1902, but his name is not listed in the 1902 Death Book of England and Wales. Very weird and strange!!!
It occasionally crossed my mind that he might have died in prison or abroad, so that his death is not contained in the 1902 Death Book of his country.
The 1891 census reveals he stays in Hampshire at the time of census survey, and thus there is some possibility that he died in Hampshire. I sent an email inquiring about his death to Winchester Registration Office, Hampshire, this morning. I hope the officer will give me some useful information before long.
I paid almost 9 dollars to Times Online and downloaded a couple of Times articles about Hannah Riddell. It seems that if I pay some money to Ancestry com. I will be able to obtain some information about Neville and Riddell, but I will think about it after returning from Sydney. (Money talks, doesn’t it?)
Here is part 14.
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I would like to let you know something about a French missionary named Germain-Leger Testevuide, working in Gotenba, Shizuoka Prefecture, who happened to see a female leper, and built a medical institution called Fukusei Hospital in Koyama, Gotenba, in 1889, which was the year when Youngman left Joshi-seisho-gakkan.
(I visited the hospital two years ago on my own and had a lovely time with a couple of staff members who kindly explained some of the archives stored in the facility.)
The following is the beginning part of a booklet written in Japanese and English entitled In Commemoration of 80th Anniversary published by Fukusei Hospital in 1969. (This is not my English translation.)
More than 80 years ago, a priest of the Paris Foreign Missionary Society, Father Germain Testevuide, visited their missions in Japan on foot. On the road in Gotenba, he first met and thereafter often visited and helped a poor leper woman, deserted by her husband and turned out of her home by her family who gave her but one bowl of rice a day. She eked out a miserable existence alone in a hut under a water mill and, to add to her distress, had become blind. Father Testevuide, moved to compassion, decided to help her and other such unfortunate outcasts.
In 1887, there was no hospital for the accommodation and treatment of leprosy patients. They lived as vagabonds, begging their food especially around the temples but they were scorned by their fellowmen as if they were cursed by the gods.
Father Testevuide, aroused to action, leased an old house in the outskirts of Gotenba and took six patients. When the news spread, other victims came, soon more than he could care for. In an attempt to ease the situation, Father, in a letter dated February 2, 1888, submitted a somewhat detailed plan in an application to Bishop Osouf who was then Archbishop of Tokyo. In a letter dated February 8 of the same year, Bishop Osouf granted him the permission to found a leprosarium, adding a blessing for the success of his enterprise.
Meanwhile, the neighbors of his leased house in Gotenba who did not like to have these outcasts in their midst, took advantage of the financial difficulty of the owner. The owner was given the condition to have him remove his patients. Father, unwilling to cause trouble, sent his patients home temporarily. He, then, solicited help from foreign residents in Japan and his friends in France. Thanks to their generosity, 2.5 acres of land on the present site of Koyama were bought and after buying a two-storey house, he moved it to his land. This became the first hospital.
An application for the establishment of the hospital was sent to the Sunto District Office on April 29, 1889, and the permit was granted on May 16 of the same year. Fukusei Byoin had come into being.
During the year of 1889, a ward for the patients was built and more land was purchased. There were 14 patients by the end of the same year. From the summer of 1890, the administration of the hospital became less of a burden, but Father Testevuide who had devoted all his energies to the treatment and welfare of his dear ones, had already ruined his health. He reluctantly left Japan for Hong Kong in March, 1891, in order to recuperate there at the Bethania Sanatorium. However, shortly afterwards, on August 4, 1891, with his thoughts turned towards Japan, he died.
A very moving story, isn’t it?
I hope all of you are enjoying this beautiful winter afternoon weather, my precious friends. I will go back to my research work. Bye for now…
12 comments:
A Very Happy New Year, Cherry and friends.
May “the year of 2009” bring a good health, joy and happiness to you and to all your family.
I have been having hectic time since last month, but I enjoyed reading this blog very much. Thank you for Cherry, Plum and friends.
Reiko
Hi, ladies!!!
A very, very happy new year to you all, my precious friends.
I hope you had a wonderful New Year’s Day and made a splendid start for the year.
I spend New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in Ohita, drinking, eating, chatting endlessly till late in the night. Everybody except me was so tough and vital, feeling no exhaustion and hangover. Amazing, isn’t it!!!
Anyway our New Year’s festivity is over, and I will try to go back to my normal research mode, which is a bit difficult after a few continuous party nights. But fortunately the book delivered a couple of days before my trip to Ohita was discovered to be quite useful in my research and I am extremely happy about it.
I will let you know what it is later on. But here is part 10.
(10)
In 1890, Kate Youngman and Seishin Ohtsuka (1845-1926) agreed to rescue a leprosy patient hospitalized in a Catholic hospital in Koyama, Gotenba, Shizuoka Prefecture.
Let me tell you something about the Christine mission work promoted in Koyama, Gotenba. Foreign missionaries began to do their propagation in various places in the prefecture in 1874 or 75 after the notice board announcing the prohibition of Christianity preach was removed in 1873.
In March, 1880, some Christians in Koyama and James H. Ballagh, an elder one, got together for discussion and decided to build Koyama Preach House in the foxtail millet field owned by Kihei Tsuchiya, a local Christian farmer, by borrowing 120 yen from the USA Reformed Church.
Six years later, in 1886, Youngman built a cottage in Koyama, possibly close to the preach house, and spent summer helping the staff of the house doing the mission work in that rural area.
In April, 1889, Youngman, Ohtsuka and his wife Kane (1855-1946), whose elder sister was the mother of Tsuneko Gauntlett (1873-1953), a social reformer, visited Koyama together, and Youngman and James H. Ballagh discussed the work of Ohtsuka, who passed the missionary examination after being baptized by D. Thompson and studying at James Curtis Hepburn (1815-1911), a Presbyterian medical missionary. They decided to have Ohtsuka work as an assistant missionary of the Reformed Church at Koyama and Gotenba.
Ohtsuka’s father was a doctor employed by the shogun government and the lord of Honda Mima-saka-no-mori (???), and appeared to be familiar with or at least interested in medicine or various medical treatments. (According to a web article, he was a doctor, which is not proved at the moment.) Followed by his success in the missionary examination, he went to Tori Island on his own, leaving his wife Kane, in 1888, but became sick and returned to his wife at home, possibly in Shizuoka where he was born and raised, in the following year 1889, before he came to Koyama.
Azalea, thank you so much for your interest in my writing about Kate Youngman and I will try to answer your questions in the very near future. These are your questions:
If you don't mind, I would like you to explain why the Japanese primary school eased up for poor children, why didn't she ouycried about the policy and how could she establish other specialized school.
It’s a beautiful day today, isn’t it? Have a lovely Saturday afternoon, my precious friends. Bye, for now.
Dear Cherry and friends,
I'm glad to hear all of you are having a peaceful New Year. My family went out for shopping. I’m peacefully working on essay writing.
Since having finished checking the newsletters downloaded from the website of Poole Gakuin, I've been making Katherine Tristram's timeline.
A Brief History of Katherine Alice Salvin Tristram (1858-1948)
Katherine Alice Salvin Tristram was born to Canon Henry Baker Tristram (11 May 1822- 8 March 1906) of Durham and Eleanor Mary Bowlby (10 March 1821- 8 March 1903).
H. B. Tristram, a Doctor of Divinity (D. D.) and an ornithologist, wrote Rambles in Japan: The Land of the Rising Sun (1895) after traveling the country with his daughter who had a good command of Japanese by then.
On April 29, 1858 Tristram was born in Castle Eden, Durham. The parish register records that she was baptized in Easington, Durham.
From 1873 to 1876, she studies at Cheltenham Ladies College.
In 1882, She became the first Resident Lecturer at Westfield College (est. 1882), where she read for her degree (B. A. from the University of London) while teaching .
After being accepted by CMS on February 7, 1888, she came to Japan and became the Principal of pūru jogakko (Bishop Poole Memorial Girls’ School) in Osaka.
Hearing the news about the Noubi Earthquake of 1891, Tristram and her students visited and helped the victims.
In 1929, she and Anna Maria Tapson (1888 – 1940 in Japan) established Garden Home, a tuberculosis sanatorium for women, in Nakano, Tokyo. Both worked for the sanatorium.
In 1931, She was awarded the Ranju Hosyo (Medal with Blue Ribbon) by the Japanese government.
Hi, ladies!!!
It’s Sunday, January 4, 2009, today, and it’s been lovely and sunny, albeit a bit chilly in the morning, hasn’t it?
I will try to answer the questions given by Azalea. Her questions are:
If you don't mind, I would like you to explain why the Japanese primary school eased up for poor children, why didn't she ouycried about the policy and how could she establish other specialized school.
In the early Meiji years, the Japanese government required the parents of school children to pay tuition and other expense fees, simply because of the government’s lack of fund to fabricate school buildings, employ teachers and prepare textbooks for the children.
However, the school fees were a tremendous burden to the parents, because the fees were, possibly, much larger than the ones for nearby temple schools some of them paid for their children’s education in the Edo period. Some other parents never expected to send their children to school, because they never thought their offspring needed school education to make a living.
On the other hand, toward the end of the Edo period, 50 to 60 percent of males and 85 percent of females were illiterate (Oku, 427), and thereby the government, which was forced to realize how much far behind from Western countries Japan was in various aspects of society, felt a strong need and determination, a few years after the Meiji restoration, to raise the literacy rate of the general public in order to produce hopefully high quality nationals.
Possibly the idea of the production of high quality citizens, which was conceivably one of the important bases of the establishment of a new nation, was proposed by some Christian missionaries from Western countries. The Reverend Guido Herman Fridolin Verbeck (1830-1898), an American missionary from the Dutch Reformed Church in America, was one of them.
Verbeck, arriving in Nagasaki on November 7, 1859, taught English using the Bible, politics and economics in the Western countries, mainly to government officials. Some of them who came all the way to learn these subjects from him were Taneomi Soejima, Shigenobu Okuma, Hirobumi Ito, Toshimichi Okubo and many other individuals who occupied important posts in the new government.
On February 13, 1869, he received a letter from the Meiji government (1868-1912) ordering or asking him to go up to Tokyo and work for the creation of universities. In this fashion, he became deeply involved in the setting up of school systems of modern Japan.
In June 1869, Verbeck submitted a document titled Brief Sketch to Shigenobu Okuma, one of his former students in Nagasaki, suggesting the Japanese government what it should do to promote the westernization of the nation.
Two years later, in 1871, Tomomi Iwakura realized how important and significant Verbeck’s suggestion and attempted to materialize his study and observation trip to the USA and European countries. A tour group consisting of a variety of politicians, officials and individuals headed by Tomoni Iwakura left Yokohama for the USA on November 12, 1871, for about two years.
They made a number of visits to miscellaneous schools in the USA and other countries, which helped them to understand what school education was and to consitute the Japanese school education system.
Gakusei was issued almost ten months after the launch of their journey to the Western World.
Gakusei, the grand plan of school education system of Japan, prescribed an eight-year primary school education for children of both sexes, requesting the parents to pay for the education cost.
Obviously, from the realistic point of view, the eight-year education was too long, since the parents, especially destitute ones, were rather ignorant of the necessity of education for their offspring, and particularly the parents of daughters of school ages were not so familiar with egalitarian education.
Thus, the Gakusei plan did not go as smoothly as expected or hoped, and thus the Japanese primary education system was forced to go through diversified reforms, as already explained in my writing.
Eventually school buildings were constructed throughout the country, though a number of schoolrooms were set up in local temples. It is said that some local wealthy families made financial contributions for the construction of school buildings in their school districts.
The reduction of the government expenditure for the erection of school buildings logically led the government to offer free education to school children.
Kate M. Youngman founded a variety of schools, as examined in my previous writing, simply because the exchange rate was favorable to the US dollar at that time, which enabled her to rent some rooms for school education, hire Japanese teachers, and provide whatever was necessary for education.
I do not know whether I properly answered the questions asked by Azalea, but if my answers were inadequate or insufficient, please let me know, preferably before my leaving for Sydney on 14th of this month.
I hope all of you are enjoying your new year holiday, my precious friends. Rose is coming to my place tomorrow to discuss her essay project. I hope all of you are enjoying your essay writing and you will hold group meetings as scheduled in January and February. Bye for now…
Hi, ladies!!!
It’s me again.
Here is part 11.
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In 1890, Kate Youngman and Seishin Ohtsuka who was engaged in mission work in Koyama, Shizuoka Prefecture, came to an agreement to found a hospital and put Yae Tsushima, a protestant leprosy patient hospitalized in Fukusei Hospital, a Catholic medical facility, since there was no Protestant medical institution that took any leprosy sufferers. Tsushima was eager to leave the hospital as her faith did not go along with its Catholicism, and felt even some fear and exasperation against it. It is stated that she ran out of Fukusei Hospital to the Preach House, which was about 500 meters away, as a crow flies.
In 1894 (Meiji 27), Youngman established Ihai-en, a medical institution, at Meguro, Tokyo, and Yae moved to there from Koyama, Gotenba, by kago palanquin during the night so that nobody noticed the leprosy patient traveling from Shizuoka to Tokyo.
I hope you enjoyed reading this short episode about Yae Tsushima, my lovely friends. Bye for now…
Hi, ladies!!!
It’s Monday, January 5, 2009, today, and it’s been a warm and sunny day, hasn’t it? This mild weather is expected to continue tomorrow, according to the NHK evening weather forecast, and I am very happy about it.
This morning I went to a fabric shop to buy some cloth to make a short curtain for the kitchen window. There were a variety of curtain fabric and I chose polyester material with some pretty rose embroideries on it. Actually I wanted to get embroidered lace material and luckily I found something I was just looking for, but it was made in France and was too expensive to get: it cost almost 9000 yen per meter. The one I got cost only a little over 1000 yen per meter, which was quite reasonable to me. I made a curtain after supper this evening and replaced the old one with the new one, which is very refreshing.
In the early afternoon Rose came to my place to discuss her essay scheme, and we had a brilliant time together, talking about various topics at a tea break. I was very impressed by her story about the wedding celebration of her eldest son, who got married last month in the USA. He is 27, she remarked.
Here is part 12. I hope you enjoy my account of Kate M. Youngman.
(12)
Now I think I have to explain Kozen-sha, a charity group, established by Youngman at the age of 35, when she was still working at Graham Seminary, on November 11, 1877, four years after her arrival in Japan. She gathered ten seminary students of an age group from 15 to 20, some of whom might have been married, for the purpose of helping a girl named Sen Matsumoto of about eight years of age from a destitute family so that she could live decently and go to school. At the December meeting in the same year they decided to hold a bazaar to raise a fund for her living and educational expenses, and asked students of the seminary to bring some handicrafts they made and some items they sewed so as for the members to sell at the bazaar. They also held Saturday school for the children of fishermen, who could not attend school, helping their fathers and mothers in fishing in the sea.
The charity members were not directly involved in the management of the primary schools Youngman established, but held Christmas celebrations, decorating the rooms, preparing presents for the pupils and giving hymn signing lessons to them. All the expenses for the Christmas festivity were covered by their membership fees.
Fourteen years later, in 1891, Youngman, who had resigned from the administration of all her schools, felt some need to do something to her charity group consisting of only women.
All the members were by then married and were not able to attend regular meetings due to their domestic responsibilities. In addition, they were virtually becoming unable to continue their activities facing the opposition of their families against the Christian charity work.
The incapacitation of the members to join Youngman was, in actuality, strengthened after the Japanese government concentrated on recreating the country on the basis of nationalism from about 1886 onward. The government, intending to decrease the Christian influence on the nation, issued in 1899 the Private School Ordinance and the Official Instruction on the Separation of Religion from Education, prohibiting Bible lessons and Christian praying at private schools. Under these circumstances, antipathy against Christianity arose among the general public.
I hope all of you are having a lovely Monday evening, my precious friends. Goodnight to you all…
Dear Cherry and friends,
Hello!
How are you?
I wonder how you manage to do a lot of things in a day, Plum. You’re, indeed, exceptional!
I’m organizing research materials collected so far.
History of NSKK
Missionaries sent by the organizations affiliating Church of England were accepted by Nippon Seikokai (NSKK) (est. 1887), which was a united organization of three Anglican missionary societies: the CMS, SPG, and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. Accordingly, the NSKK is known as the Anglican Church in Japan.
In the middle of 19th century, the Japanese government was publicly opposed to Christianity although male missionaries had been coming from Western countries. The first male CMS missionary reached Okinawa in 1845. He belonged to the Loochoo Naval Mission.
In 1958, Lord Elgin’s Treaty was agreed upon between Britain and Japan. Its principal features were equivalent to the Japan-US Friendship and Trade Treaty. Because of these unequal treaties, the Japanese government had to open five ports to trade. The next year, the Episcopal Church in the United States sent Reverend Channing Moore Williams, the first Anglican missionary, to Japan. Later, he became the first Anglican Bishop of Japan.
When the CMS sent Reverend George Ensor to Nagasaki in 1969, he saw an official notice board (kosatsu or takafuda) which prohibited Christianity. In 1872, the notice boards were removed.
The Japanese government reluctantly began to accept woman missionaries. One hundred and two single or widowed woman missionaries came to Japan before 1910.
The number of woman missionaries who came to Japan from 1875 to 1889 is nineteen. During the next decade, it is 46. In the first decade of 20th century, it is 37.
Victorian women missionaries who came to Japan in the earlier stage were involved in either school management or hospital management. Some of them established institutions. They are all famous for their jobs and they reached Japan before 1890. Some of them managed sanatoriums.
Hi, ladies,
The design of the blog has a bit changedm hasn't it? It is so refreshing. It has been very fine.
I was so impressed with Plum's writing. You are so amazing.
I read Rose's son got mariied. Congratulations, Rose. It must be the happiest time in his life and I imagine that Rose feel relieved.
Hi, ladies!!!
It’s Tuesday, January 6, 2009, today, and it’s unfortunately a bit cloudy and chilly, and occasionally windy (oh, I hate the wind), in the morning, but I hope it will warm up in the afternoon.
I am leaving for Sydney on Wednesday next week, that is, 14th. There is no direct flight connecting Nagoya to Australia, and thus I have to fly to Narita first by JAL and then take a Quantus flight to Sydney, arriving at 7: 55 a. m. in Sydney. I have to wait at Narita for about 5 hours, and I will go to a massage shop in the airport building, which I did on the way back from England last April.
I will continue to write my account of three missionaries until 13th but will discontinue from 14th until returning to Japan at the end of February. I wish I could write, but since I will not take any of my research materials to Sydney I won’t be able to. The reason why I go there is seeing my daughter and her family as well as looking after her two little sons. There is no point in bringing any of my study documents since I will be just a granny, very busy changing nappies, bathing her newborn baby, taking out her one and a half year old infant for a walk, etc. etc.
I am looking forward to seeing my daughter but at the same time I am VERY looking forward to coming back to Nagoya to resume my research in spring. Funny, isn’t it?
Here is part 13.
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In 1891 (Meiji 24), Kate Youngman, after realizing clearly that the members of Kozen-sha, who were all female, were unable to continue their charity work due to their domestic duties, their families’ disapproval of their philanthropic activities, and their concern about some degree of hostility from the general public against their endeavor and occupation, admitted 11 Japanese men to Kozen-sha. Then, she and her new members established three departments of propagation, education and charity. Then she sorted out all her present work to these departments, clarifying and distinguishing her obligation and their ones.
In the following year, in 1892 (Meiji 25), Kozen-sha opened a preach house at Kamakura, did some rescue work for sufferers from the Nobi Earthquake that occurred in central Japan in 1891, and approved Youngman’s proposal of founding a facility for leprosy patients.
In 1894, at 52, Kate Youngman created an orphanage at her private residence at B6 in Tsukiji, which was called Charity Home (Jizen-kan), and accepted girls who were parentless or were sold for prostitution, as part of Kyofu-kai (founded in 1886 with Kajiko Yajima as the first head) activity.
On the other hand, Kozen-sha was sent 200 pounds (presently about 5,130,000 yen) from the Mission to Lepers of England followed by Kate Youngman’s letter to it asking a monetary contribution and founded Ihai-en at Meguro Village, Tokyo, accepting three patients including Yae Tsushima and appointing Seishin Ohtsuka (1846-1926) and his wife Kane (1855-1946) as supervisors.
Probably I haven’t told you anything about Fukusei Hospital in Koyama, Gotenba, Shizuoka Prefecture. Next time I will mention it briefly.
I hope you enjoyed reading my account of Kate M. Youngman, my lovely friends. See you tomorrow, bye-bye.
Hello, Cherry and ladies.
A Happy New Year to you.
I’ve been playing an important role of mother and granny for these two weeks, almost preparing meals, cleaning the rooms and shopping for groceries.
Tomorrow we’re going to baby-sit almost three-year-old grandson, Manato while his parents are going to a new house to receive and arrange furniture and other miscellaneous things sent from U.S. It’ll be a crucial work for them to start getting ready for a new life in Okazak.
Hoping Manato will have a good time with his grandpa and grandma tomorrow.
I’d like to write about relief activities after the great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, which motivated Takeko Kujo to build Asoka hospital, currently one of the greatest medical centers in Japan.
The great Kanto Earthquake drove Takeko to serve those who suffered from devastated earthquake at the peril of her life. She experienced a burning hell. Extraordinary heat made diamond reduced to ashes inspite of being stored in a doubled fireproof safe at Hatori jewelry store.
Tukiji Hongwanji where Takeko lived was burned to the ground. Takeko took part in relief activities.
The Buddhist Women’s Association with the membership of 500,000 or 600,000 across the country launched relief works with Nishi Honganji in Kyoto. It built a strong system to relieve victims in the disaster-stricken area. Piles of donations and relief supplies were inundated from approximately three thousand of local Buddhist Women’s Associations.
“Emergency Relief Branch Office” was set up at a relief headquarters in the ruins of Tsukiji Hongwanji that had been ravaged by fire. Takeko, a head of BWA, played a leading role, bearing social conscience to serve in mind.
First Takeko organized a “children’s school” made by a big makeshift tent donated by an army division at Ueno park. Children were taught and taken care of while their devastated parents were busy restoring after the earthquake.
I'll continue to write, so good-by for now, my precisous friends.
Hi Cherry, Plum and friends,
It's been clear and fine today, but very chilly unexpectedly.
I went to Plum’s house yesterday afternoon to discuss Mieko Kamiya who I’m trying to write about. This is the first time for me to write a research essay and I had no idea how to develop the contents. I have been struggling and confusing. After reading my writing about Mieko, Plum asked me a lot of questions and gave me useful and precise advice. I learned that I needed to give a definition of word which was not clear for readers, which might not be necessary if it was a Japanese essay. And I also knew that I had to always ask myself why she did so and explain it clearly, not to write the fact itself. It is too difficult for me to write this kind of essay and I became more uneasy and confusing. I’m not sure if I can do it. But Plum encouraged me and made me feel like to say “Yes, we can!” (I mean “Yes, I can with Plum’s help.) Plum, thank you so much for your generosity and consideration.
Mieko Kamiya was born into a well-educated family, but hard time in her childhood over her parents' quarrels, and mastered French, English, German, Greek, Latin as well as Japanese and she had tremendous talents in various field after overcame tuberculosis. She was a writer, translator, professor of Kobe Women’s College and Tsuda College, psychiatrist and a mother of two children at the same time. I’m trying to focus on her as a psychiatrist for the Hansen’s disease patients. She was very mysterious person because of her abnormal talent possibly and it seems very difficult to trace one of her achievements.
I will stop here now. By for now, my precious friends.
Hi, ladies!!!
It’s Wednesday, January 7, 2009, today. Alas, how fast time flies!!! Without me knowing, the first week of the year 2009 has already passed. We have now 358 days left this year. I wonder what I can do for the rest of the year. It is truly challenging to me.
I have been struggling to find out any clue about when and how Neville Edmund Cornwall Legh, the brother of Mary H. Cornwall Legh, died in these approximately two years. According to the family tree, he died in 1902, but his name is not listed in the 1902 Death Book of England and Wales. Very weird and strange!!!
It occasionally crossed my mind that he might have died in prison or abroad, so that his death is not contained in the 1902 Death Book of his country.
The 1891 census reveals he stays in Hampshire at the time of census survey, and thus there is some possibility that he died in Hampshire. I sent an email inquiring about his death to Winchester Registration Office, Hampshire, this morning. I hope the officer will give me some useful information before long.
I paid almost 9 dollars to Times Online and downloaded a couple of Times articles about Hannah Riddell. It seems that if I pay some money to Ancestry com. I will be able to obtain some information about Neville and Riddell, but I will think about it after returning from Sydney. (Money talks, doesn’t it?)
Here is part 14.
(14)
I would like to let you know something about a French missionary named Germain-Leger Testevuide, working in Gotenba, Shizuoka Prefecture, who happened to see a female leper, and built a medical institution called Fukusei Hospital in Koyama, Gotenba, in 1889, which was the year when Youngman left Joshi-seisho-gakkan.
(I visited the hospital two years ago on my own and had a lovely time with a couple of staff members who kindly explained some of the archives stored in the facility.)
The following is the beginning part of a booklet written in Japanese and English entitled In Commemoration of 80th Anniversary published by Fukusei Hospital in 1969. (This is not my English translation.)
More than 80 years ago, a priest of the Paris Foreign Missionary Society, Father Germain Testevuide, visited their missions in Japan on foot. On the road in Gotenba, he first met and thereafter often visited and helped a poor leper woman, deserted by her husband and turned out of her home by her family who gave her but one bowl of rice a day. She eked out a miserable existence alone in a hut under a water mill and, to add to her distress, had become blind. Father Testevuide, moved to compassion, decided to help her and other such unfortunate outcasts.
In 1887, there was no hospital for the accommodation and treatment of leprosy patients. They lived as vagabonds, begging their food especially around the temples but they were scorned by their fellowmen as if they were cursed by the gods.
Father Testevuide, aroused to action, leased an old house in the outskirts of Gotenba and took six patients. When the news spread, other victims came, soon more than he could care for. In an attempt to ease the situation, Father, in a letter dated February 2, 1888, submitted a somewhat detailed plan in an application to Bishop Osouf who was then Archbishop of Tokyo. In a letter dated February 8 of the same year, Bishop Osouf granted him the permission to found a leprosarium, adding a blessing for the success of his enterprise.
Meanwhile, the neighbors of his leased house in Gotenba who did not like to have these outcasts in their midst, took advantage of the financial difficulty of the owner. The owner was given the condition to have him remove his patients. Father, unwilling to cause trouble, sent his patients home temporarily. He, then, solicited help from foreign residents in Japan and his friends in France. Thanks to their generosity, 2.5 acres of land on the present site of Koyama were bought and after buying a two-storey house, he moved it to his land. This became the first hospital.
An application for the establishment of the hospital was sent to the Sunto District Office on April 29, 1889, and the permit was granted on May 16 of the same year. Fukusei Byoin had come into being.
During the year of 1889, a ward for the patients was built and more land was purchased. There were 14 patients by the end of the same year. From the summer of 1890, the administration of the hospital became less of a burden, but Father Testevuide who had devoted all his energies to the treatment and welfare of his dear ones, had already ruined his health. He reluctantly left Japan for Hong Kong in March, 1891, in order to recuperate there at the Bethania Sanatorium. However, shortly afterwards, on August 4, 1891, with his thoughts turned towards Japan, he died.
A very moving story, isn’t it?
I hope all of you are enjoying this beautiful winter afternoon weather, my precious friends. I will go back to my research work. Bye for now…
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