Tsuda Umeko

Tsuda Umeko

Tsuda Umeko ( Japanese 津 田 梅子 ; born December 31, 1864 in Tokyo ; died August 16, 1929 ) was a Japanese educator who campaigned for better education for women during the Meiji and Taisho periods .

life and work

Tsuda Umeko was the daughter of the scholar Tsuda Sen (津 田 仙, 1837–1908), a samurai who was interested in Western knowledge, especially agriculture. In 1871 Umeko was one of the five girls who were sent abroad with the mission led by Prince Iwakura . Umeko came to the USA, where she was trained in Washington by Charles Lanman (1819–1895), who u. a. worked for the Japanese embassy, ​​was accepted and was able to learn English there. She did not return to Japan until 1882, where she had to learn some Japanese from scratch.

First she was privately employed by the leading politician Itō Hirobumi . From 1885 she taught English at the "華 族 女 学校" (Kazoku jogakkō, school for noble girls). In this capacity she studied again from 1889 to 1892 in the USA, namely biology and education at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. In 1900 she left the aristocratic school and founded her own school for girls, the "女子 英 学 塾" (Joshi Eigaku juku) with an emphasis on teaching English. She remained the director of the school, which was recognized as a technical school in 1904, until an illness in 1917 forced her to resign. In 1905 she became the first president of the Japanese branch of the Young Women's Christian Association .

Tsuda Umeko has been a leader in providing girls with higher education. It also played an important role in promoting English as a teaching subject. Her school received university rank in 1948 and has been called "津 田 塾 大学" (Tsudajuku daigaku, Tsuda University) ever since.

Others

The portrait of Tsuda Umeko will appear on the 5000 yen banknote from 2024.

photos

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  Umeko 1871

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  The ladies in Washington

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  Prince Iwakura and ladies

literature

• S. Noma (Ed.): Tsuda Umeko . In: Japan. An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Kodansha, 1993, ISBN 4-06-205938-X , p. 92.
• Hunter, Janet: Tsuda Umeko . In: Concise Dictionary of Modern Japanese History. Kodansha International, 1984. ISBN 4-7700-1193-8 .

Web links

Commons : Tsuda Umeko  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

1. ^ [1] Message in the FAZ , accessed on April 11, 2019
2. ↑ Taken in Washington in 1872, Tsuda Umeko on the right on the lap of a Japanese woman.
3. ↑ Shown in " The Graphic ", December 7th, 1872.

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Tsuda is the family name, Umeko the first name.