Histories of women in and around Japan, 1868-1945

Shimoda Utako was born in 1854 in Mino (present-day Gifu Prefecture), the oldest daughter of the local samurai Hirao Juzo and his wife Fusako. Her birth name was Seki. Because her father was an Imperialist in a domain that favored the bakufu regime, he was out of favor during her childhood, and she grew up genteel but poor. Her time was spent reading everything she could lay her hands on and, as a samurai’s child, learning judo and other physical self-defense as well. She was writing waka poetry from the age of four, entertaining the adults around her.

Her family’s star rose again after the Restoration; in 1870 the family moved to Tokyo when her father received a post in the new government. His poetry teacher, the poet Hatta Tomonori, took an interest in Seki’s future and supported her work. In 1872 he arranged for her to become a lady-in-waiting at the Imperial Palace, where she remained for eight years, becoming close to the Imperial concubine Yanagihara Naruko among others. The name “Utako” (poem) was given to her there by the Meiji Empress because of her poetic skills.

In 1879, at 26, she left the Palace to marry the kendo instructor Shimoda Takeo; unfortunately, he was already becoming an alcoholic invalid, and he died of stomach cancer five years later. The widowed Utako reinvented herself as the principal of a private school for young ladies, the Toyo School, where she lectured on the Tale of Genji and Tsuda Umeko, newly returned from America, taught English. Her private students included the wives of high officials, many of whom, such as Ito Umeko, had begun as geisha or similar and wanted to improve their educations. In 1885 the Toyo School became a part of the School for Noble Girls, newly established by the Empress with Utako as a senior instructor. She was to leave this position later after butting heads with Nogi Maresuke, the military hero in charge of the corresponding boys’ institution and the school as a whole.

She visited the United Kingdom, Europe, and the US in 1893, tasked with observing its educational practices and thus bettering the education of the Princesses Masako and Fusako, meeting Queen Victoria in the process; in 1899, she founded the Jissen Girls’ School and the Girls’ Polytechnic, for middle-class and lower-class students respectively, with herself as principal; these schools were notable in their early days for accepting Chinese students (and requiring them to unbind their feet), among whom was the future revolutionary Qiu Jin. The schools survive today as the Jissen Women’s Educational Institute.

In 1907, the left-wing Heimin Shimbun newspaper published an extended attack on her, accusing her of sexual relations with a wide range of men, mostly right-wing politicians such as Ito Hirobumi. The government banned sales of the relevant issue, which identified the upright and imperialist lady educationalist with the dokufu, women painted as lecherous and potentially murderous like Takahashi O-Den and Harada Kinu.

Utako was also the author of numerous textbooks and biographies of Japanese and Western women, as well as founding patriotic associations and helping to establish two fundamental Japanese schoolgirl uniforms, the prewar hakama and the ongoing sailor-suit style. (Her English Wikipedia page goes into detail about her attitudes and philosophies, which I will not reproduce here; notably, she wrote and educated toward the “good wife, wise mother” ideal, but also believed that her students needed to be capable of independent work.) She died in 1936.

Sources
Nakae
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2212&context=clcweb (English; paper about Utako’s background and in particular her work with Chinese students)
https://www.jissen.ac.jp/school/shimoda_utako/biography/index.html (Japanese; detailed biographical account on the Jissen University site, with photographs)