Tsuda Umeko

I was watching a documentary about a woman named Umeko Tsuda, a pioneer for women’s higher education in Japan during the Meiji period. She grew up with a father who strongly advocated for westernization and Christianization in Japan. In 1871, she volunteered as the youngest member of the Iwakura Mission (the most important step toward modernization in Japan) to participate in an exchange student program in Washington D.C and studied under the American education system until she was 18. She attended the Georgetown Collegiate Institute to study English, as well as mastering in language, math, science, and music.

By the time she returned to Japan in 1882, she was barely able to speak Japanese and experienced a culture shock when she saw the inferior position of women in society. Even her father, who was relatively westernized, still held onto traditional patriarchal authoritarianism. Having witnessed American women’s liberated position and their independence, Umeko was shocked by their dependence. Although the Meiji government promoted girl’s education, it did not emphasize the development of women’s intelligence and personality, but rather trained women to support their husband and their children.

She began teaching English at Peeresses’ School but she did not agree to the school policy which stated that education was intended to polish girls as ladies and train them to become obedient wives and good mothers. She returned back to the United States to study biology at Bryn Mawr College and although she wanted to remain in the United States to continue her study, she was still concerned about Japanese women’s education. Her experience in the United States strengthened her to contribute to Japanese women’s education and social status.

During her second stay in the United States, she decided that other Japanese women should have the same opportunity she had to study abroad as well. She believed that higher education was crucial in improving women’s status. She spent her last year in the United States making public speeches about Japanese women’s education and raised $8,000 in scholarship funds, named the “American Scholarships for Japanese Women”.

After her return to Japan, she published several theses and made public speeches about the status of Japanese women and continued teaching at Peeresses’ School. Although girl’s education was expanding due to the booming economy after the Sino-Japanese War and the 1889 Girl’s Higher Education Law, these schools were still emphasizing women’s domestic rules. She resigned from the Peeresses’ School and opened Joshi Eigaku Juku (The Women’s Institute for English Studies), and introduced western-style education, and emphasized building students’ personalities and encouraging creativity.

However, the school faced a funding shortfall and Umeko spent her time fundraising and teaching at other schools in order to support herself and the school. After her death in 1929, Joshi Eigaku Juku changed its name to Tsuda Eigaku Juku in 1933 and after the Second World War, it became known as Tsuda Juku, still maintaining as one of the most prestigious women’s institutes of higher education in Japan.

I thought this tied in really well to The Vindication of the Right’s of Women because in the pages that I had to summarize from page 102 to 104, the author kept on talking about how women should follow after what they want to do, not what they’re told to do. In the last paragraph on page 102,

               

                “How many women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have

                practiced as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect,

                supported by their industry, instead of hanging their heads subcharged with the

                dew of sensibility, that consumes the beauty to which it as first gave lustre;”

this relates to what Tsuda Umeko was doing; she followed in her footsteps and did what she wanted to do. Both Tsuda Umeko and Mary Wollstonecraft wanted women to do what was best for themselves, not what men wanted them to do. Despite that Tsuda Umeko argued for equal education rights for women and Mary Wollstonecraft urged for equality among both men and women, they both make the same argument that women should become independent and do something for themselves. Tsuda wanted more women to join her to improve their status through education. She wanted women to step out of their comfort zones to change the inferior position of women in society and evolve the Japanese society into a modernized country like the United States. Wollstonecraft argued that if women continue to depend on men and just rely on them forever, they will not be valued any longer once their beauty fades away because “it is the fate of the fairest flowers to be admired and pulled to pieces by the careless hand that plucked them” (103). She also encourages men to influence women “to make her a helpmeet for them” (104), meaning that she wanted the men to realize that women should get equality and independence just like the men.