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Clara Matsuno (1853-1931)
Dec. 27th, 2024 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomi[Chronologically out of order because I only learned of her existence through last week’s person…]
Clara Matsuno was born in 1853 in Berlin as Clara Zitelmann (or possibly Tietermann or Ziedermann by some accounts). She studied at a Froebel-method school for kindergarten teachers there (there is fierce academic debate about which school she actually attended).
In 1876 she met and married Matsuno Hazama, a Japanese forestry student in Berlin; they became the first official German-Japanese marriage. In the same year Matsuno took Clara back to Japan with him, where she became the first head teacher at Japan’s first kindergarten, affiliated with the Tokyo College of Education for Women (later Ochanomizu University). Although she did not initially speak Japanese, she made use of the Froebel methods she had studied to direct the kindergarten’s curriculum, including use of its one piano (which no one else could play) for songs. She also passed on her methods to the first Japanese kindergarten teachers, Toyoda Fuyu and Kondo Hama.
As the need for more trained kindergarten teachers was recognized, Clara taught pedagogy at the same college until 1881, as well as giving German, English, and piano lessons to officials of the Imperial Household and teaching music at the Noble Girls’ School. In 1894 she performed in a piano duo concert for charity at the Rokumeikan.
Her daughter Frieda Fumi (who was to teach piano and voice to Otsuka Kusuoko) was born in 1877 and died in 1901, leaving two children. After Hazama’s death in 1908, Clara took her grandchildren back to Germany, where her granddaughter’s descendants can still be found. She died there in 1931 at the age of seventy-seven.
Clara Matsuno was born in 1853 in Berlin as Clara Zitelmann (or possibly Tietermann or Ziedermann by some accounts). She studied at a Froebel-method school for kindergarten teachers there (there is fierce academic debate about which school she actually attended).
In 1876 she met and married Matsuno Hazama, a Japanese forestry student in Berlin; they became the first official German-Japanese marriage. In the same year Matsuno took Clara back to Japan with him, where she became the first head teacher at Japan’s first kindergarten, affiliated with the Tokyo College of Education for Women (later Ochanomizu University). Although she did not initially speak Japanese, she made use of the Froebel methods she had studied to direct the kindergarten’s curriculum, including use of its one piano (which no one else could play) for songs. She also passed on her methods to the first Japanese kindergarten teachers, Toyoda Fuyu and Kondo Hama.
As the need for more trained kindergarten teachers was recognized, Clara taught pedagogy at the same college until 1881, as well as giving German, English, and piano lessons to officials of the Imperial Household and teaching music at the Noble Girls’ School. In 1894 she performed in a piano duo concert for charity at the Rokumeikan.
Her daughter Frieda Fumi (who was to teach piano and voice to Otsuka Kusuoko) was born in 1877 and died in 1901, leaving two children. After Hazama’s death in 1908, Clara took her grandchildren back to Germany, where her granddaughter’s descendants can still be found. She died there in 1931 at the age of seventy-seven.
