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senzenwomen2024-01-26 08:02 pm
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Ogino Ginko (1851-1913)
Ogino Ginko was born in 1851 in present-day Saitama Prefecture, the daughter of a prosperous farmer: a small, tanned, clever child with beautiful eyes and a strong will. At eighteen [or sixteen] she married Inamura Kan’ichiro, headman of a nearby village; their happy (?) marriage ended in divorce (on his part yet) when Ginko discovered that he had infected her with gonorrhea, leaving her unable to bear children. She checked herself into the Juntendo Hospital in Tokyo for treatment, finding it humiliating that the doctors attending to her private parts were all men. Her own discomfort and that of the other women patients there marked the beginning of her determination, furthered by the atmosphere of novelty surrounding the 1868 Meiji Reformation, to become a doctor herself.
In better health after a year of treatment, she returned home and began to study traditional Chinese medicine, returning to Tokyo for serious study in 1873 at age 23 (among the people she consulted for advice at this point was the artist Okuhara Seiko, an acquaintance of her ex-husband’s family). She first apprenticed herself to the traditional physician and scholar Inoue Yorikuni; although she wore men’s clothing for her lessons, it was not long before the recently widowed Inoue made a pass at her, which ended her apprenticeship. [Some texts do not mention this disagreeable episode at all, while at least one site describes her as Inoue’s second wife.] She fled to Kofu in Yamanashi Prefecture to teach at Naito Masuko’s school for small girls. In 1875 she returned to Tokyo and entered the newly established Tokyo Women’s Normal School (later Ochanomizu Women’s University), and after graduating at the top of her class was able to enter the Kojuin Medical School, which normally did not admit women, through an introduction from various eminent figures, including Shimoda Utako.
However, no matter how many times she submitted her application for the exam required to open a practice, it was rejected: “such a thing is without precedent.” Around this time she wrote a miserable article in Jogaku Zasshi, a magazine for women’s edification: “…The weather is cold, frost smothers the roof tiles, but who will listen to me protest that my dress is too thin?” and other poetic images expressing her frustration in the language of the highly educated. She even considered studying overseas, but hesitated because of the huge expenses involved.
At length Ginko discovered the Ryonogige, an 8th-century book of imperial edicts which mentioned women doctors, seven clever girls from good families who studied to serve the Imperial Family as physicians. This tradition stood up in her favor, but it was not until September 1884 that Ginko’s efforts finally opened the examination to women; she took the exam the following year and passed with flying colors, becoming at age 35 the first official woman doctor in modern Japan. She opened a clinic in central Tokyo, which became so popular it outgrew its first premises, and also served as physician and instructor at the Meiji Girls’ School under Iwamoto Yoshiharu.
From an interview with the novelist Shimizu Shikin at this time, sometime in the late 1880s: “When I first opened my clinic, there were absolutely no women doctors, so with other colleagues and when making house calls, I felt as if I were being tested every time. I still get curious looks from maids and so on during house calls. … It’s in gynecology and pediatrics that women doctors are most needed. … [Is being a doctor a suitable job for a woman?] Well, I’m single so I have no household issues, but it must be difficult for a woman doctor with a husband. She has to go out in the middle of the night if a patient summons her, and when her husband comes home wanting his wife’s comfort, she may be seeing to an emergency patient. If there’s an epidemic, she has to leave her tired husband and her children both and go out to do her work.”
In 1890, having begun to attend a nearby church, she met and fell in love with the twenty-six-year-old seminary student Shikata Yukiyoshi, a Christian activist with whose ideals she could empathize (she had also worked with the Japan Christian Women’s Association for Reforming Customs (WCTU), led by Yajima Kajiko, in its anti-prostitution activities). They married and moved to Hokkaido to “start a new utopia,” calling it Immanuel Village. Real life did not cooperate, however; the shortage of patients in their small town kept them poor, and after some time, as Shikata wanted to return to school, they considered separation.
He died in 1905. Ginko returned to Tokyo and reopened her clinic in 1909, living with her widowed older sister and dying of a stroke in 1913 at age 63.
Sources
Nakae, Mori 1996, Shimamoto
https://www.pastmedicalhistory.co.uk/ogino-ginko-japans-first-female-doctor/ (English) Decent summary with a nice color picture of the young Ginko
https://www.town.setana.lg.jp/ogino/ (Japanese) Detailed information on the site of the town where Ginko lived in Hokkaido
https://www.pref.saitama.lg.jp/documents/190553/ginkomanga2.pdf (Japanese) Adorable manga biography
Note: The English Wikipedia entry on Ginko is remarkably garbled and unreliable, including the line “Afterward, she entered Tokyo Women’s Normal School (present-day Ochanomizu University), which was at that time a private medical academy with an all-male student body.” Do these people think?
In better health after a year of treatment, she returned home and began to study traditional Chinese medicine, returning to Tokyo for serious study in 1873 at age 23 (among the people she consulted for advice at this point was the artist Okuhara Seiko, an acquaintance of her ex-husband’s family). She first apprenticed herself to the traditional physician and scholar Inoue Yorikuni; although she wore men’s clothing for her lessons, it was not long before the recently widowed Inoue made a pass at her, which ended her apprenticeship. [Some texts do not mention this disagreeable episode at all, while at least one site describes her as Inoue’s second wife.] She fled to Kofu in Yamanashi Prefecture to teach at Naito Masuko’s school for small girls. In 1875 she returned to Tokyo and entered the newly established Tokyo Women’s Normal School (later Ochanomizu Women’s University), and after graduating at the top of her class was able to enter the Kojuin Medical School, which normally did not admit women, through an introduction from various eminent figures, including Shimoda Utako.
However, no matter how many times she submitted her application for the exam required to open a practice, it was rejected: “such a thing is without precedent.” Around this time she wrote a miserable article in Jogaku Zasshi, a magazine for women’s edification: “…The weather is cold, frost smothers the roof tiles, but who will listen to me protest that my dress is too thin?” and other poetic images expressing her frustration in the language of the highly educated. She even considered studying overseas, but hesitated because of the huge expenses involved.
At length Ginko discovered the Ryonogige, an 8th-century book of imperial edicts which mentioned women doctors, seven clever girls from good families who studied to serve the Imperial Family as physicians. This tradition stood up in her favor, but it was not until September 1884 that Ginko’s efforts finally opened the examination to women; she took the exam the following year and passed with flying colors, becoming at age 35 the first official woman doctor in modern Japan. She opened a clinic in central Tokyo, which became so popular it outgrew its first premises, and also served as physician and instructor at the Meiji Girls’ School under Iwamoto Yoshiharu.
From an interview with the novelist Shimizu Shikin at this time, sometime in the late 1880s: “When I first opened my clinic, there were absolutely no women doctors, so with other colleagues and when making house calls, I felt as if I were being tested every time. I still get curious looks from maids and so on during house calls. … It’s in gynecology and pediatrics that women doctors are most needed. … [Is being a doctor a suitable job for a woman?] Well, I’m single so I have no household issues, but it must be difficult for a woman doctor with a husband. She has to go out in the middle of the night if a patient summons her, and when her husband comes home wanting his wife’s comfort, she may be seeing to an emergency patient. If there’s an epidemic, she has to leave her tired husband and her children both and go out to do her work.”
In 1890, having begun to attend a nearby church, she met and fell in love with the twenty-six-year-old seminary student Shikata Yukiyoshi, a Christian activist with whose ideals she could empathize (she had also worked with the Japan Christian Women’s Association for Reforming Customs (WCTU), led by Yajima Kajiko, in its anti-prostitution activities). They married and moved to Hokkaido to “start a new utopia,” calling it Immanuel Village. Real life did not cooperate, however; the shortage of patients in their small town kept them poor, and after some time, as Shikata wanted to return to school, they considered separation.
He died in 1905. Ginko returned to Tokyo and reopened her clinic in 1909, living with her widowed older sister and dying of a stroke in 1913 at age 63.
Sources
Nakae, Mori 1996, Shimamoto
https://www.pastmedicalhistory.co.uk/ogino-ginko-japans-first-female-doctor/ (English) Decent summary with a nice color picture of the young Ginko
https://www.town.setana.lg.jp/ogino/ (Japanese) Detailed information on the site of the town where Ginko lived in Hokkaido
https://www.pref.saitama.lg.jp/documents/190553/ginkomanga2.pdf (Japanese) Adorable manga biography
Note: The English Wikipedia entry on Ginko is remarkably garbled and unreliable, including the line “Afterward, she entered Tokyo Women’s Normal School (present-day Ochanomizu University), which was at that time a private medical academy with an all-male student body.” Do these people think?