From Japan to Bryn Mawr and Back

On campus last semester, former Tsuda President Masako Iino shared the story of this extraordinary Mawrter. Excerpts from her talk below:

“Ume was transplanted from still half-feudal Japan to comparatively advanced America at a time when the liberalization of women’s education was in full bloom. She was taken in by Charles and Adeline Lanman and spent her formative years, ages seven to 18, with them. Charles Lanman was the American Secretary to the Japanese Legation, working under the first Japanese chargé d’affaires to the United States. ...

“When she returned to Japan in 1882, she was like a foreigner, ‘an American with a Japanese body.’ She had difficulty handling chopsticks, for instance, and could not sit on tatami mat floors. Language was a serious problem. … The hardest thing she found was that she was virtually outside the mainstream of Japanese culture. ...

“In 1889, Ume left Japan once again, this time to receive in the United States the higher academic training still unavailable to women in Japan. … Her stay at Bryn Mawr was marked by several moves, which advanced her thinking regarding the need for a school of higher education for women in Japan. One such move called for creating an American Scholarship for Japanese Women, which would enable Japanese women to be educated in the United States and, upon their return to Japan, become English teachers, to enlighten other Japanese women. The campaign was a great success, as her friends in Philadelphia gave her significant support by establishing the Japanese Scholarship Committee. … The resulting scholarship program supported 25 women students before it ended in 1976. One such woman was Michi Kawai ... [who] studied at Bryn Mawr College, taught at Ume’s school upon her return to Japan, became the first Japanese General Secretary of the YWCA of Japan, and founded Keisen School for Young Women in 1929.”