Yokoi Tamako (1855-1903)

[nnozomi]

Yokoi Tamako was born in 1855 in Edo to the Kumamoto domain retainer Hara Masatane and his wife. At thirteen, when the Meiji Restoration dismantled the domains, she moved with her family back to Kumamoto in the south. In 1872 she married Yokoi Saheita, who immediately left for the United States, where he had already spent some time, to study politics and law. Left behind, Tamako entered the Kumamoto Western School, founded in part by her husband (and the first public coeducational school in Japan), to study English, Western etiquette, Western sewing, and so on. (Her classmates there included the Christian activists Yokoi (Ebina) Miya, daughter of Yokoi Shonan (Tamako’s uncle-in-law) and his wife Tsuseko, who was Yajima Kajiko’s sister, as well as Tokutomi (Yuasa) Hatsuko, older sister of the opinionated Tokutomi brothers Soho and Roka and daughter of Tsuseko and Kajiko’s sister Hisako (a fourth sister, Junko, was also an educator). Everybody’s related.).

Saheita returned to Japan in 1875 and found a position with the new Meiji government; however, no sooner had the couple moved to Tokyo than he died of tuberculosis, leaving Tamako a widow at 21. She studied various traditional arts, became a Christian, and found employment teaching etiquette and sewing at girls’ schools in Tokyo, near the place of her birth. In 1885 she was employed at the Shin-Sakae Girls’ School, where her relation-by-marriage Yajima Kajiko was the principal. Along with Kajiko, Tamako became involved in the Women’s Association for Reforming Customs, protecting poor women from being sold overseas as karayuki-san and fighting for monogamy within Japan.

Tamako devoted herself in particular to the founding of an art school for women. The Tokyo School of Fine Arts had been founded in 1887, but it did not admit women. Tamako, who had studied painting with Asai Chu and joined the White Horse Society of Western-style painters, wanted a place where women and girls could study art seriously. With support from the sculptor Fujita Bunzo among others, she founded the Private Women’s School of Fine Arts (now Joshibi University of Art and Design) in Tokyo in 1900, “to empower the self-reliance of women through the arts, improve the social status of women, and produce women teachers in the arts.” Fujita, who had studied sculpture with the Italian Vincenzo Ragusa (husband of Tama Ragusa), became the first principal.

With trouble finding students and money alike, Tamako’s health began to suffer. She went to Sato Shizu, wife of Dr. Sato of Juntendo Hospital (and daughter of the senior Dr. Sato, who had treated Ogino Ginko), herself from a lineage of doctors and artists drawing on rangaku Dutch traditions of both arts. Shizu persuaded her husband to help out, and the school stabilized.

Tamako died not long after, in 1903, at the age of forty-seven. Shizu became principal of the art school in her stead. Among the school’s eventual alumnae were the artists Kataoka Tamako, Migishi Setsuko, Maruki Toshi, Hori Fumiko, Tomiyama Taeko, Sano Nui, and Matsui Fuyuko, as well as the actress Okada Yoshiko.

Sources
Ishii
https://awarewomenartists.com/en/magazine/le-style-occidental-au-japon-yoga-et-les-peintres-japonaises-entre-louverture-du-japon-en-1868-et-la-deuxieme-guerre-mondiale/ (English) essay
…and the ridiculous amount of links in the article, good grief. I think I got carried away.

Comments

[sakana17]

You're not kidding about everyone being related! :D Thank you for all the links in the article - I have just been down many fascinating rabbit holes for the Joshibi University of Art and Design alumnae. (The Okada Yoshiko one, wow.)

[nnozomi]

Glad you found them interesting! Some of the people linked will eventually have their own entries here (Okada Yoshiko for sure--as you say, wow).

[chestnut_pod]

Wow, thank you for getting carried away! This was an especially informative bio.

[nnozomi]

I'm glad to hear it! It's a good illustration of how interrelated (literally and figuratively) everyone was.