Aso Ito (1876-1956)
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senzenwomenAso Ito was born in 1876 in Onomichi, Hiroshima, where her family kept a tobacco shop or possibly an inn. After finishing elementary school she was fostered out to a family in Kobe. The details of her youth are not clear, but she probably spent much of it as a live-in maid and a factory clerk. She married while in Osaka and had a daughter [although some sources say she adopted a daughter later but never had children of her own], but left her husband because he was “truly boring.”
Around 1910 or so, she took her young daughter [if she had one] and moved to Innoshima, an offshore island near her birthplace, where she launched the Aso-gumi company as a subcontractor to the various shipbuilding companies now established there. Her specialty was brokerage and ship scrapping. Shipbuilding was then a thriving industry and the Aso-gumi flourished, with employees eventually numbering over a thousand.
Ito also opened the Aso Inn, since there was then nowhere to stay on the island, which became popular with politicians like Ozaki Yukio (and presumably his wife Yei) and writers such as Kawahigashi Hekigoto and Hayashi Fumiko. Fumiko, another Onomichi native, put Ito into a novel as O-Riku, with “hair short as a man and cigarettes in her sleeve.” She had her employees call her “uncle” or “gramps.” Hekigoto described her as a tiny woman dressed in men’s clothes, with a square face, a formidable gaze, and a heavy Kansai drawl, hair cut very short and a dueling scar on her forehead, sometimes hidden by her Panama hat. The knife scar came from a quarrel with an electrician over payment; Ito visited him while he was in prison for the attack and employed him when he came out, earning his eternal loyalty.
The money she earned went back to the community: she founded a kindergarten, a girls’ vocational school, and a scholarship fund in the region and built a sewage system and several parks, as well as a temple to Kannon. In her old age she left her business to another single mother she trusted and went to live in her park near the Kannon temple, where she prayed regularly. She died in 1956 at the age of eighty.
Sources
http://kamijimajiten.com/104 (Japanese) Adorable illustration of Ito by local (modern-day) elementary schoolers
Around 1910 or so, she took her young daughter [if she had one] and moved to Innoshima, an offshore island near her birthplace, where she launched the Aso-gumi company as a subcontractor to the various shipbuilding companies now established there. Her specialty was brokerage and ship scrapping. Shipbuilding was then a thriving industry and the Aso-gumi flourished, with employees eventually numbering over a thousand.
Ito also opened the Aso Inn, since there was then nowhere to stay on the island, which became popular with politicians like Ozaki Yukio (and presumably his wife Yei) and writers such as Kawahigashi Hekigoto and Hayashi Fumiko. Fumiko, another Onomichi native, put Ito into a novel as O-Riku, with “hair short as a man and cigarettes in her sleeve.” She had her employees call her “uncle” or “gramps.” Hekigoto described her as a tiny woman dressed in men’s clothes, with a square face, a formidable gaze, and a heavy Kansai drawl, hair cut very short and a dueling scar on her forehead, sometimes hidden by her Panama hat. The knife scar came from a quarrel with an electrician over payment; Ito visited him while he was in prison for the attack and employed him when he came out, earning his eternal loyalty.
The money she earned went back to the community: she founded a kindergarten, a girls’ vocational school, and a scholarship fund in the region and built a sewage system and several parks, as well as a temple to Kannon. In her old age she left her business to another single mother she trusted and went to live in her park near the Kannon temple, where she prayed regularly. She died in 1956 at the age of eighty.
Sources
http://kamijimajiten.com/104 (Japanese) Adorable illustration of Ito by local (modern-day) elementary schoolers
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Date: 2026-01-16 12:06 pm (UTC)LOL, I love her already. And more seriously, she sounds like such a wonderful woman. And aww, that illustration, it made me laugh. :)