Ogino Ginko

Ogino Ginko

Ogino Ginko ( Japanese 荻 野 吟 子 , real name: 荻 野 ぎ ん , Ogino Gin ; born March 3, 1851 in Tarawase; † June 23, 1913 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese doctor from the Meiji period . She was the first woman to pass the medical state examination and practiced Western medicine as a gynecologist . She was committed to improving women's rights and published several articles on health and hygiene. The minor planet 10526 Ginkogino is named after her.

Life

Youth and education

Ginko was born in the former Musashi Province , today Saitama Prefecture , in the town of Tarawase, today Kumagaya , as the fifth daughter of the village chief. At the age of sixteen she married her first husband. According to some sources, it was the son of the director of the Ashikaga bank, in others he is referred to as the head of the neighboring village. In any case, the marriage was considered a good match. However, the husband contracted gonorrhea through affairs and by the age of nineteen was also infected with ginko. The disease made her sterile and therefore divorced her husband.

Because of her illness, Ginko had to be treated for two years. She spent the first few months in Juntendo Hospital, where there were only male doctors. Like the other female patients, Ginko was very depressed that she could not be treated by a woman and she later wrote:

“We always sighed that being examined by a male doctor was always a misery. There are many women in this world who end up with an incurable disease or die prematurely because of reluctance to be examined by a man [...] Others become sterile and give their emotionally cold husbands an excuse to divorce. "

For Ginko, the only way out of this dilemma was through medical training for women and she decided to become a doctor. First, from 1875, she attended the normal school for women in Tokyo for four years , today Ochanomizu Joshi Daigaku . However, medical studies were reserved for men and Ginko needed the support of the women's rights activist Shimoda Utako and the recommendation of the President of the Japanese Red Cross Society , Ishiguro Tadanori ( 石 黒 忠 悳 , 1845-1941) to obtain a special permit. From 1879 to 1882 she studied Western medicine at the Kōju Hospital. Her family refused to support her financially, so Ginko had to pay the costs herself.

In the course of the modernization of Japan it became necessary for doctors to obtain a license that required a passed state examination in Western medicine. However, after completing her degree, Ginko received no government permission to take the state examination. The official justification was that it had never happened in history that a woman worked as a doctor. In 1883 Ginko started a petition in which she put forward her arguments as to why female doctors were more likely to win the trust of patients than their male colleagues. She pointed out that pregnant women in particular urgently needed examinations by gynecologists , but did not notice them out of shame or even shy away from talking to their husbands about their complaints. She also began to collect historical evidence that women had held healing professions throughout history. With that, she finally managed to convince the chairman of the Hygiene Bureau , Nagayo Sensai . In a landmark decision in 1884, he stipulated that women were allowed to take the state examination. Of the three women who were admitted to the state examination that year, Ginko was the only one to pass the examination.

Doctor and social reformer

After her state examination, Ginko founded the Ogino Hospital in Tokyo, where she practiced as a gynecologist and obstetrician . In 1886 Ginko converted to Christianity and was baptized. In the same year she joined the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and campaigned against prostitution and cohabitation . She also spoke out against traditions that suppressed women, such as the custom that women keep silent in the presence of men and married women blacken their teeth ( ohaguro ) and shave their eyebrows. In addition, Ginko was a founding member of the women's health society in 1887. She lectured at the monthly meetings and was an editor of the Society's magazine, Fujin Eiseikai Zasshi .

Ogino Ginko's grave in the Zōshigaya cemetery

From 1889 Ginko worked as a doctor and trainer at the Meiji women's school in Tokyo. Its director, Iwamoto Yoshiharu, had launched the magazine Jogaku Zasshi (German: Magazine for the enlightenment of women ) four years earlier . It contained historical personalities and tips for everyday life and from 1890 Ginko was one of the staff of the magazine. Her job was to write articles on health and hygiene. In October 1893 she gave an interview to the magazine, followed by the essay The Past and Future of Women Doctors in Japan , which she published in three parts in successive issues of the magazine. In it, she advocated opening universities to women or, if women felt uncomfortable with men, creating women's universities.

Since 1890 Ginko was married to the Protestant pastor Yukiyoshi Shikata. In 1894 she followed him to Hokkaidō , where she opened a practice and continued to treat women, although she was no longer active in her various societies. After the death of her husband, she returned to Tokyo in 1908, where she again took over the management of Ogino Hospital. She held this post until her death from arteriosclerosis in 1913 and was buried in the Zōshigaya cemetery.

The writer Jun'ichi Watanabe memorialized Ginko Ogino in his biographical novel Hana Usumi ( 花 埋 み ) in 1970.

literature

• Yuehtsen Juliette Chung: Struggle for National Survival: Eugenics in Sino-Japanese Contexts, 1896-1945 . Psychology Press 2002, ISBN 978-0-41-593366-7

Remarks

1. ↑ What is meant here is Kan'ichirō Inamura ( 稲 村 貫 一郎 ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 10526 Ginkogino (1990 UK1) . Solar System Dynamics, accessed November 15, 2016
2. ↑ ^{a b} Sam Maggs: Ogino Ginko . In: Wonder Women. 25 Innovators, Inventors, and Trailblazers who Changed History. Quirk Books 2016, p. 64
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Ellen Nakamura: Ogino Ginko's vision: "The Past and Future of Women Doctors in Japan" (1893) . In: US-Japan Women's Journal , No. 34, 2008. Online version on JSTOR (registration required). Accessed November 8, 2016
4. ^ Laura Lynn Windsor: Women in Medicine: An Encyclopedia . ABC-CLIO 2002, p. 157
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Yuehtsen Juliette Chung: Struggle for National Survival: Eugenics in Sino-Japanese Contexts, 1896-1945 . Psychology Press, 2002, p. 131
6. ↑ Sam Maggs: Ogino Ginko . In: Wonder Women. 25 Innovators, Inventors, and Trailblazers who Changed History. Quirk Books 2016, p. 66

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Ogino is the family name, Ginko the first name.