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senzenwomen2023-11-24 07:51 pm
nnozomi) wrote in senzenwomen2023-11-24 07:51 pm
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Niijima Yae (1845-1932)
Niijima Yae was born in 1845 in Aizu, present-day Fukushima Prefecture a little north of Tokyo. Her father Yamamoto Gonpachi was a gunnery instructor, and they were a gun-savvy family; Yae learned to handle a rifle in her teens from her older brother Kakuma and became an instructor herself. In 1865, she married a friend of her brother’s, Kawasaki Shonosuke. The following year, full-scale warfare broke out in Aizu as the Boshin War flared between the Imperialist army and the shogunate-loyal forces. Yae took part in the defense against the Imperialists of Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle, fighting with the men: she cut her hair short, wore her late younger brother’s clothes, carried a sword in her belt and a repeating rifle over her shoulder, shot for herself and directed the cannoneers as well. (She is said to have shot Oyama Iwao, later Oyama Sutematsu’s husband, and seriously wounded him.) They called her “the Jeanne d’Arc of Aizu” or the ” Tomoe Gozen of Aizu.” Having expected to kill herself upon their defeat, she was spared when it turned out she was a woman.
After the war, she left her husband and went to Kyoto to track down her brother Kakuma. There, while working as a teacher in a girls’ school, she met Niijima Jo (otherwise known as Joseph Hardy Neesima), who had just returned from ten years in the United States. Eager to see Western culture for himself, he had snuck through the bakumatsu government’s closed borders to travel illegally. He had studied at Amherst among elsewhere, becoming a Christian and returning to Japan in 1874. He met Yamamoto Kakuma while working to establish the Christian-centered Doshisha English School (now Doshisha University) in Kyoto. Of Kakuma’s sister Yae, he wrote to Mrs. Hardy, among his American benefactors, “She is by no means beautiful, but she lives a handsome life” [back-translated as I can’t find the English original text].
Yae and Niijima became engaged almost immediately and married in January 1876, after Yae’s baptism; he felt that she met his requirements for “a wife who thinks for herself rather than simply obeying her husband.” Their relatively equal marriage drew criticism based on the conventional mores of the time (including from the reliably anti-feminist Tokutomi Soho, who relates that he retracted his criticism and became her supportive adviser after her husband’s death; citation, as they say, needed). They also lived in Western style, with a bed in the bedroom; the lady missionaries taught Yae to cook cabbage rolls, omelets, steak, and roast beef, as well as cakes and cookies, and she dressed in Western clothes and wore high heels on the street. She also startled the people of Kyoto by riding around on a bicycle. Working with the missionary Alice Starkweather, she helped to found the Doshisha Girls’ School (now Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts) as a branch of the English School, and taught etiquette there (her mother Saku, who had accompanied her to Kyoto along with Kakuma’s daughter Miné, served as a dorm mother).
After Niijima died, in 1890, Yae joined the Japan Red Cross as a nursing volunteer, working in army hospitals as a nursing instructor during the Russo-Japanese and First Sino-Japanese Wars and earning the new nickname of “Japan’s Nightingale.” She also campaigned for better treatment for nurses. Her last years were devoted to the tea ceremony, and she died in 1932 at the age of 88.
Sources
Nakae
https://unseen-japan.com/yamamoto-yae/ English article, with some direct quotations
https://www.yae-mottoshiritai.jp/ Japanese, based around Yae’s hometown, with numerous pictures
https://www.doshisha.ac.jp/information/neesima/yae/index.html Japanese, on the Doshisha site, with a detailed chronology
After the war, she left her husband and went to Kyoto to track down her brother Kakuma. There, while working as a teacher in a girls’ school, she met Niijima Jo (otherwise known as Joseph Hardy Neesima), who had just returned from ten years in the United States. Eager to see Western culture for himself, he had snuck through the bakumatsu government’s closed borders to travel illegally. He had studied at Amherst among elsewhere, becoming a Christian and returning to Japan in 1874. He met Yamamoto Kakuma while working to establish the Christian-centered Doshisha English School (now Doshisha University) in Kyoto. Of Kakuma’s sister Yae, he wrote to Mrs. Hardy, among his American benefactors, “She is by no means beautiful, but she lives a handsome life” [back-translated as I can’t find the English original text].
Yae and Niijima became engaged almost immediately and married in January 1876, after Yae’s baptism; he felt that she met his requirements for “a wife who thinks for herself rather than simply obeying her husband.” Their relatively equal marriage drew criticism based on the conventional mores of the time (including from the reliably anti-feminist Tokutomi Soho, who relates that he retracted his criticism and became her supportive adviser after her husband’s death; citation, as they say, needed). They also lived in Western style, with a bed in the bedroom; the lady missionaries taught Yae to cook cabbage rolls, omelets, steak, and roast beef, as well as cakes and cookies, and she dressed in Western clothes and wore high heels on the street. She also startled the people of Kyoto by riding around on a bicycle. Working with the missionary Alice Starkweather, she helped to found the Doshisha Girls’ School (now Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts) as a branch of the English School, and taught etiquette there (her mother Saku, who had accompanied her to Kyoto along with Kakuma’s daughter Miné, served as a dorm mother).
After Niijima died, in 1890, Yae joined the Japan Red Cross as a nursing volunteer, working in army hospitals as a nursing instructor during the Russo-Japanese and First Sino-Japanese Wars and earning the new nickname of “Japan’s Nightingale.” She also campaigned for better treatment for nurses. Her last years were devoted to the tea ceremony, and she died in 1932 at the age of 88.
Sources
Nakae
https://unseen-japan.com/yamamoto-yae/ English article, with some direct quotations
https://www.yae-mottoshiritai.jp/ Japanese, based around Yae’s hometown, with numerous pictures
https://www.doshisha.ac.jp/information/neesima/yae/index.html Japanese, on the Doshisha site, with a detailed chronology