Reflections on Tsuda Umeko: Pioneer of Women's Education in Japan

Japan’s five-thousand yen banknote will have a new face as of 2024, and that face is Tsuda Umeko (1864—1929), who devoted her life to the education of Japanese women. Umeko founded one of Japan’s first schools of higher education for women—a school that later became Tsuda College. Half a century after her death, an old trunk in the college attic was found to contain hundreds of personal letters written by Umeko to her foster mother in America, Adeline Lanman. Umeko had been sent to America as a young child to learn English and the ways of Western civilization. She returned to Japan at eighteen, completely Americanized and a stranger in her own country. The “attic letters” are a fascinating chronicle of her repatriation to late-19th century Japan, and of her encounters with iconic figures such as Japan’s first prime minister Ito Hirobumi. This book shows how the passionate young girl metamorphosed into one of Japan’s foremost educators, by following the thoughts of Umeko herself as she recorded them in her letters. The story is told by oba Minako, a writer who graduated from Tsuda College and was herself a returnee to Japan after a decade in the United States. Tsuda Umeko was awarded the 42nd Yomiuri Prize for Literature (1990).