Kawahara Misako (1875-1945)
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senzenwomenKawahara Misako was born in 1875 in Nagano. Her father Tadashi, a teacher and scholar of Chinese literature, was a Sinophile of sorts who believed strongly in harmony between Japan and China as the future of Asia (“harmony” here, of course, tending to refer to China’s peaceful submission to Japan), and he brought her up with an education suited to his beliefs (Misako’s mother, who died young, was named Shinako with remarkable symbolism, “Shina” being the common Japanese word for China at the time). After graduating from the Tokyo Women’s Normal School (or else its Nagano counterpart, sources differ), Misako returned to Nagano to teach high school, but found it frustrating. She visited the distinguished educator Shimoda Utako, who shared some of her father’s views, for advice and was directed to a position teaching Japanese to Chinese children at the Daido School in Yokohama.
In 1900, she was invited to go to Shanghai to teach at Wuben Girls’ School, whose founder Wu Xin believed that, unlike the numerous Western-led mission schools for girls springing up at that time, education should be in the direction of Asia and thus Japan. There she taught Japanese, arithmetic, singing, and drawing, while herself studying Chinese and living in the poor conditions of the Chinese quarter.
Misako’s sincere efforts to understand China and the Chinese drew the eye of the Japanese military, which was then winding up for the Russo-Japanese War and concerned with the Mongolian people living around the Qing-Russia border. The army invited Misako to go and teach at a girls’ school to be run along Japanese lines, founded by Prince Gungsangnorbu (Günsennorov) and Princess Shankun of the Qaracin (Harqin, Kharachin) Right Banner. However, this was not all it seemed; she was also asked to observe any Russian movements in the area and report back, given the code name of “Shen.”
Misako set off for Qaracin (now in Chifeng in China’s Inner Mongolia, in the grasslands halfway between Beijing and the Russian border), riding in a donkey cart with a dagger in her bra. The nine-day trip was plagued by weather and fear of bandits, but she arrived safely and began at once to set up her school and begin her espionage, assisted in both endeavors by Princess Shankun (who served as principal of the school, and was also incidentally aunt to Kawashima Yoshiko). The school taught Mongolian girls of high birth, numbering about sixty, and offered subjects including reading (in Japanese, Mongolian, and Chinese), Japanese, arithmetic, history, geography, calligraphy, drawing, knitting, singing (in Japanese and Mongolian), and gymnastics.
The following year, the Russo-Japanese War began in earnest. Misako was surprised to find that she recognized the faces of a group of lamas visiting the Qaracin palace; they were actually Japanese spies on their way to blow up the Eastern Qing Railway. She kept their secret and aided them on their way.
After the war Misako, decorated with the Order of the Sacred Crown for her spy work, remained in Qaracin to focus on education for Mongolian girls in earnest. In 1907 she decided to go back to Japan temporarily for further study (taking with her three students who became exchange students at Jissen Girls’ School), putting the Mongolian school in the hands of Torii Kimiko, wife and collaborator of the anthropologist Torii Ryuzo, and promising the princess and her students that she would be back. However, upon her return to Japan she found herself all unawares engaged to the banker Ichinomiya Rintaro, who was stationed in New York; she had no choice but to break her promise to the Mongolian women, which she regretted all her life. In 1909 she published a memoir of her time in Mongolia. She died in Shizuoka in 1945.
Sources
Ishii
In 1900, she was invited to go to Shanghai to teach at Wuben Girls’ School, whose founder Wu Xin believed that, unlike the numerous Western-led mission schools for girls springing up at that time, education should be in the direction of Asia and thus Japan. There she taught Japanese, arithmetic, singing, and drawing, while herself studying Chinese and living in the poor conditions of the Chinese quarter.
Misako’s sincere efforts to understand China and the Chinese drew the eye of the Japanese military, which was then winding up for the Russo-Japanese War and concerned with the Mongolian people living around the Qing-Russia border. The army invited Misako to go and teach at a girls’ school to be run along Japanese lines, founded by Prince Gungsangnorbu (Günsennorov) and Princess Shankun of the Qaracin (Harqin, Kharachin) Right Banner. However, this was not all it seemed; she was also asked to observe any Russian movements in the area and report back, given the code name of “Shen.”
Misako set off for Qaracin (now in Chifeng in China’s Inner Mongolia, in the grasslands halfway between Beijing and the Russian border), riding in a donkey cart with a dagger in her bra. The nine-day trip was plagued by weather and fear of bandits, but she arrived safely and began at once to set up her school and begin her espionage, assisted in both endeavors by Princess Shankun (who served as principal of the school, and was also incidentally aunt to Kawashima Yoshiko). The school taught Mongolian girls of high birth, numbering about sixty, and offered subjects including reading (in Japanese, Mongolian, and Chinese), Japanese, arithmetic, history, geography, calligraphy, drawing, knitting, singing (in Japanese and Mongolian), and gymnastics.
The following year, the Russo-Japanese War began in earnest. Misako was surprised to find that she recognized the faces of a group of lamas visiting the Qaracin palace; they were actually Japanese spies on their way to blow up the Eastern Qing Railway. She kept their secret and aided them on their way.
After the war Misako, decorated with the Order of the Sacred Crown for her spy work, remained in Qaracin to focus on education for Mongolian girls in earnest. In 1907 she decided to go back to Japan temporarily for further study (taking with her three students who became exchange students at Jissen Girls’ School), putting the Mongolian school in the hands of Torii Kimiko, wife and collaborator of the anthropologist Torii Ryuzo, and promising the princess and her students that she would be back. However, upon her return to Japan she found herself all unawares engaged to the banker Ichinomiya Rintaro, who was stationed in New York; she had no choice but to break her promise to the Mongolian women, which she regretted all her life. In 1909 she published a memoir of her time in Mongolia. She died in Shizuoka in 1945.
Sources
Ishii
