Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey From East to West and Back

by Janice P. Nimura

  Ume’s rather modest credo, hewing always to the Meiji ideal of good wife and wise mother, protected her from the sharp tongues of the traditionalists. Now that her ideas were appearing under her own name, instead of Alice’s, Ume paid more attention to the critics. “There have been one or two criticisms,” she wrote to Mrs. Lanman about her Far East article, “but nothing especial and on every side I hear comment, because, you know, it is so unusual for a Japanese woman to do anything.” But Ume’s years of toil were beginning to yield dividends. In the spring of 1898, the government appointed her to teach at the Women’s Higher Normal School in addition to the Peeresses’ School—a welcome boost to both salary and ego, and proof that those in power approved of at least one Japanese woman doing something.

  Further proof presented itself in May of that year. A Massachusetts matron by the name of Alice Ives Breed—“a remarkably handsome woman with magnificent physique and charming presence,” according to one admiring reporter—was visiting Tokyo as vice president of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, an organization to whose presidency she hoped to be elected at that summer’s convention in Denver. Having made a strong impression upon several Japanese statesmen in the course of her stay, she urged them to appoint a delegate to attend the convention. Whether influenced by Mrs. Breed’s charm or her imposing physique, they were persuaded. There was one obvious candidate.

  “What do you think has happened?” Ume wrote to Mrs. Lanman from the steamship Olympia two whirlwind weeks later. “Something very wonderful and very nice, too!!” The minister of education had broached the question of Mrs. Breed’s invitation to Ume on a Friday evening; by the following Friday, she had sailed, along with a female colleague from the Peeresses’ School. The government, moving with uncharacteristic efficiency, had granted them a five-month leave of absence.

  By the end of June, Ume stood before an auditorium full of women in Denver, thanking them for their warm welcome and their inspiration. “Thus from one nation to another will be passed on the work of education and elevation for women,” Ume told them; “thus, step by step, will woman arise, throughout all the world, from the slave and drudge of savage days, from the plaything and doll of later periods, to take her place as true helpmate and equal of man.” American women had stretched their hands toward their Japanese sisters, who in turn would bring enlightenment to the women of other, as yet less civilized, Asian lands.

  Denver was the beginning of a bold new phase. Ume hurried east after the convention, eager to reunite with Mrs. Lanman, now an elderly widow. She visited old friends not seen for six years, including Alice Bacon, of course, and Martha Carey Thomas of Bryn Mawr, and shared with them the dream she had outlined for Anna Hartshorne. She toured a number of schools as well, and in the course of her travels met an eighteen-year-old girl, deaf and blind since early childhood, who was studying for admission to Radcliffe College. “I have enjoyed meeting you, dear Miss Tsuda, more than I can tell you, and I wish you every success and happiness,” wrote Helen Keller, commemorating their visit with an autographed sample of her extraordinary achievement. Ume saved the note as a keepsake. Was there any better example of the power of education to bring women out of the dark?

  As the five months of her leave drew to a close, Ume was surprised to receive a second invitation, this time from several prominent English women via the Japanese ambassador in London. Would Miss Tsuda come and observe the progress of women’s education on the far side of the Atlantic? Permission arrived swiftly from Tokyo: Ume’s leave was extended until the following summer, and came with a stipend of a thousand yen. She sailed for Liverpool in November, hardly daring to believe her good fortune. “I have been thinking over what a lovely, lovely visit this has been to America,” she wrote Mrs. Lanman from the ship. “I do not think it has a flaw. It has been so beautiful, too beautiful, it almost frightens me, and now to have so much lovely ahead of me . . . I can only rejoice and believe myself unworthy of it all.”

  For the first time Ume was traveling the world not as a student but as an independent adult, an educator, an authority on a nation in the ascendant, eagerly consulted by international peers. The trip was restorative—an extended break from the demands of professional life. In London she bought a raincoat, rode the underground railway, ate in restaurants, went to the theater. She made the rounds of the tourist attractions, and found it oddly sacrilegious to walk on the tombstones of the great in Westminster Abbey. “It seems very strange not to be in any hurry,” she wrote. “I never in my life was so luxurious.”

  Her hosts in England were the wives of archbishops and the headmistresses of colleges, women who displayed their considerable intellects with pride. At Cheltenham Ladies’ College she met the formidable Dorothea Beale, “a most capable, powerful woman” who had grown a small school into an institution with over nine hundred students. “It is encouraging to see how education has progressed in England,” Ume wrote in her journal, “for we are at a stage in Japan no worse than when Miss Beale began her life-long work.” Ume spent several weeks at St. Hilda’s Hall at Oxford, auditing lectures on Shakespeare and reading Addison and Pope, but also attending her share of tea parties and receptions. She met a niece of Tennyson and some relatives of Wordsworth; she took careful note of titles and much satisfaction in special treatment. “I have been about like a high-born lady with carriages and people to attend me wherever I went, and in fine style,” she wrote. “I can hardly realize that it is I who am doing these things.”

  Back in London again, she was thrilled to be granted an interview with Florence Nightingale. “I would rather have seen her than royalty itself,” she wrote. “I shall not soon forget my glimpse of that bright intelligent invalid face, whose clear mind & youthful activity seemed strange in that sick-room of a woman past her seventieth year.” Even in her decline, propped up on white pillows under a red silk quilt, Miss Nightingale impressed Ume powerfully: a woman whose pioneering work had won her international acclaim, yet who had never actually strayed beyond the boundaries of feminine conduct. Nursing, like teaching, was a profession that supported the domestic ideal. The interview confirmed Ume’s growing confidence in her own mission. She left Miss Nightingale’s bedside at once starstruck and gratified. “I did so want to ask for her autograph or something from her, but I hardly dared today,” she confided to her journal. As she left, a maid presented her with a nosegay of violets as a parting gift. Ume pressed them carefully.

  Though Dorothea Beale and Florence Nightingale made stirring female models, Ume drew at least as much inspiration on her travels from discussions with a powerful man. This was true to form. Charles Lanman, indulgent and well connected, had delighted in engaging Ume’s quick mind; the charismatic Hirobumi Ito had taken up the role in Ume’s adulthood, enjoying her opinions on current topics during the months she lived in his home. In England, Ume found another distinguished father figure who took her ideas seriously: William Dalrymple Maclagan, the elderly archbishop of York. Invited to stay for several days at Bishopthorpe Palace, Ume was flattered to receive the prelate’s personal attention on more than one occasion. “He is a lovely man, of a character simple and holy, and one that inspires reverence,” Ume wrote. “He is very kind to me, and I do feel the honor very much.”

  To Maclagan, who seemed truly interested in Ume’s work, she was moved to express her private doubts. “I told him that I really wished to do something, and to grow in grace and that I had had many advantages, but I must do something to pass them on to others, and how the weight of responsibility hung on me, although I was so unworthy of the blessings that God had given me in comparison with so many of my fellow country-women, that often I felt I would be glad of not having seen and known and heard so much,” she wrote in a confessional rush. Were her ambitions self-aggrandizing, unwomanly, too aggressive? Could a woman “do something” and still remain humble? The archbishop confirmed the rightness of her vocation to act for the betterment of her society. “He gave me his blessing, and his praye
rs for my future work, and I felt indeed helped by his words and advice, so sympathetic, so wise and good.”

  Somewhat to her own surprise, Ume found she missed her professional routine. Swanning about like a great lady was “well enough for a year or six months, but in spite of hard times, and little money and hard grinding work, I like my busy life and enjoy feeling I am doing something,” she wrote. She may have expressed a contentment born of necessity—the chance to live as a “lady of leisure” had evaporated with her refusal to consider marriage—but it was contentment nonetheless. At no point did she betray a longing to turn her back on Japan and remain in the West—not even in her letters to Mrs. Lanman.

  In May of 1899, nearly a year after leaving Tokyo, Ume headed back across the Atlantic. There was time for one more glimpse of her friends in Philadelphia and Mrs. Lanman in Washington before the long westward trip across the continent. “How strange, how very strange it is that I am really going back after having been away so long to take up the broken threads of my life there,” Ume wrote to her foster mother from Vancouver. “Wherever I am, you must remember how much I am thinking of you, how much I love and sympathize with you in your grief and loneliness, although perhaps you may not think I do, or feel that I care as much as I do.” For once, Ume made no mention of her longing for the Georgetown fireside. Her year of travel and professional recognition had reoriented her. “Please do not in the least feel anxious for me,” she closed her last letter before setting sail for Japan. “The Empress of China is a fine boat and runs well and I shall have every care and attention, I am sure, and in two weeks I shall be home again.”

  SUTEMATSU MISSED UME during her year away; with her youngest child now twelve, she felt the burden of too much time on her hands. Meanwhile, Shige was busier than ever: in addition to her brood of six, ages six to fifteen, she had taken over Ume’s classes at the Women’s Higher Normal School. During the New Year’s holidays, on January 4, 1899—a day Ume filled with a visit to the British Museum, a ride on the upper deck of an omnibus, and preparations for a side trip to Paris—Sutematsu invited Shige to come for the day and spend the night. It was a rare and precious convergence for the two old friends.

  Shige shared news and gossip from the Women’s Higher Normal School, as well as the hopeful information that its principal, Hideo Takamine, was interested in raising the currency of Western ideas there. Takamine had been a classmate of Sutematsu’s brothers long ago at the domain school in Aizu; during the years when Kenjiro had studied at Yale, Takamine had been a student at the Oswego Normal School in northern New York State. He was an old friend and an ideological ally, having learned in America that education was not simply a matter of texts memorized in a classroom.

  Ever since Alice Bacon had left Tokyo a decade earlier, her Japanese friends had wished for her return. Now they saw their opportunity. Sutematsu asked Shige to sound out Takamine, and a few days later he paid a call on the Oyama residence. Sutematsu wrote to Alice that very evening. “It seems he wants just such a person as you for the school,” she told her foster sister: “an American lady of the right kind” to serve as a cultural model both inside and outside the classroom. “I think the school needs a foreign teacher of a strong character, who will influence the girls in the right way,” she went on. “Of course you may not be able to have your way always, still, Mr. Takamine is a man of very advanced ideas and he will be very sympathetic in your work.”

  In her next letter Sutematsu continued the hard sell. The Normal School couldn’t pay much, but it would require Alice to teach only two hours a day, leaving her time for other pursuits—such as helping Ume, who had by now shared her pet plan with Alice. “You are very much admired by them and they are very anxious to secure your help,” Sutematsu wrote of Takamine and his colleagues. She followed flattery with a dash of guilt, for good measure: “They want you to come as soon as you can and I hope to hear a favorable reply, for if you will not come, the responsibility rests on my shoulders and they will say that I did not write in sufficiently attractive light to induce you to accept the position.”

  Teaching at the Normal School would be even more attractive than Alice’s earlier stint at the Peeresses’ School. Shige would be a colleague, and Sutematsu suspected that Ume would shift her teaching duties to the Normal School upon her return, “for the other school is not at all to her liking and there are many teachers there who dislike her so much that it will not be pleasant for her when she comes back.” With Alice and Shige and Ume all teaching together, and Sutematsu advising in the background, it would be as close as they had yet come to the girlhood dream of starting their own school in Japan.

  Alice’s responsibilities at Hampton prevented her from gratifying Sutematsu’s request on the spot. She had recently finished the construction of Hampton’s nurse-training hospital and was committed as well to a new project: in 1897, she had opened Deephaven, a summer retreat for academics and intellectuals on Squam Lake in New Hampshire. Life in America was full and rewarding for Alice, but still Japan beckoned; after all, at some point young Mitsu, Alice’s adopted daughter, would be ready to bring her American education back to her native land. Alice wrote a long letter to Ume in England, which Ume relayed to Georgetown. “She really seems to be contemplating coming to Japan again, and I shall be so glad if she does come,” Ume wrote to Mrs. Lanman. “She has such good, substantial, sterling qualities which one can always depend upon, and I think a great deal of her as a friend.” As she contemplated her next chapter, reliable friends began to seem more important than ever.

  UME RETURNED FROM her year of wonders in the heat of midsummer, 1899. Within days of her arrival, she was summoned to the palace (along with her co-delegate from the previous summer’s Denver convention) to report her experiences to the empress herself. “It will be a fine ending to this year’s travels,” Ume told Mrs. Lanman. Here was the reception she had yearned for upon her first return to Tokyo in 1882, the recognition of her growing reputation as an authority on the education of women, and the satisfying conclusion of the empress’s original mandate delivered in 1871: “When, in time, schools for girls are established, you shall be examples to your countrywomen, having finished your education.” Ume had at last finished her education. She was ready to be an example.

  The reality of the imperial audience was, as usual, less glorious than the prospect. Ume was pleased with her new dress—of foreign cut and Japanese fabric, appropriately—but August in Tokyo was a sticky time for bonnets and fitted bodices and lace collars. The encounter was mercifully brief. Ume and her colleague followed an official to the audience chamber and, after making their bows, stood before the empress—elegant in a pink morning gown trimmed in white—and answered her questions face-to-face. Ume had spoken nothing but English for the past year. “It was a great honor, of course,” Ume wrote, “but a great trial to have to speak there before the Empress especially, as I feared I might make a mistake in speaking.” A final round of corset-creaking bows, then on to an antechamber, where there were tea and cakes and the usual ceremonial gifts of white silk.

  More recognition followed as the fall approached. A reporter paid a call, hoping to interview Ume for a series on notable women. “I told him it was too soon for any such things, and I did not want it at all,” Ume told Mrs. Lanman. “I think he was much amused by my refusal.” Ume was pleased that items mentioning her return had appeared in the papers, but the idea that the press might regard the year just ended as the apex of her career was deeply irritating.

  Ume resumed her schedule at both the Peeresses’ and the Women’s Higher Normal School, her voice rasping with the unaccustomed strain of speaking for hours at a time. Her days were full, but her mind was elsewhere. In December she began to commit her intentions to paper. “My dear Mrs. Morris,” she wrote to her benefactress in Philadelphia. “I have been wanting to write you especially of late to tell you that at the end of the present school year, I am going to ask to resign from my work in the Peeresses’ School, an
d take up the school work about which I talked to you last summer.” The letter went into the mail with another, to Martha Carey Thomas, restating Ume’s plans and asking for help in raising the funds for a schoolhouse.

  There was no turning back now, but there was still a school year to finish out. Ume closed her letters with pleas for discretion. “I should dislike to have exaggerated reports and rumors of my work get abroad and Tokyo is a very dreadful place for gossip,” she wrote. “So please ask those who might speak of it to be careful, as I am not yet freed from my responsibilities to the government.”

  Most discreet of all was Ume herself. No one at the Peeresses’ School or the Women’s Higher Normal School (except Shige, of course) had any inkling of her distracted state of mind. In January the government showed its approval by raising her salary along with her court rank. Ume appreciated the extra money but barely paused to enjoy the news; she neglected to mention it in her letters for a month. A new millennium was dawning. “How strange it seems to be writing 1900!” she exclaimed. “I make mistakes all the time, and write eighteen and then have to correct it.”

  It was an auspicious moment for new beginnings. In 1899, still riding the wave of patriotism that followed the Sino-Japanese War, the Meiji government had passed the Girls’ Higher School Law, mandating that every prefecture open at least one school for girls, equivalent to the middle schools that already existed for boys. Educated women were needed to raise educated sons to fight for Japan. A subsequent ordinance restricted mission schools by prohibiting religious education. Taken together, these moves expanded female education while placing it more firmly under government control.