Utako Shimoda

Utako Shimoda (下田 歌子, Shimoda Utako; September 30, 1854 – October 8, 1936) was a Japanese educator and poet of the Meiji and Taishō period. Born in present-day Ena, Gifu, she was the founder many educational organizations, including what is today Jissen Women's University. She had international influence, and was one of the most influential women in Asia.

Biography

Utako Shimoda was born into a samurai family as Seki Hirao, in Iwamura, in Gifu Prefecture. For the first 6–7 years of her life she was an only child, and studied the Confucian classics; she is said to have read all the Chinese and Japanese books her parents had. Her father and grandfather were Confucian scholars. In the run up to the Meiji Restoration, the Hirao family were firmly on the side of the Emperor, and when the Shogunate fell, Utako's father was given a prominent position in Tokyo, where the family moved in 1870, when Utako Shimoda was about 16.

She worked as lady-in-waiting to Empress Shōken from 1871-1879. Seki was well-educated and recognised as an excellent poet, so much so that the empress changed her name to Utako (poem child). As a result, she rose through the ranks. At court, she attended lessons and lectures, including learning French. In 1875, she began working on the empress's educational works. She formed connections to political leaders including Itō Hirobumi, Yamagata Aritomo, and Inoue Kaoru.

In November 1879, she resigned from court to marry the swordsman Takeo Shimoda, at her family's request. He suffered from alcoholism and a serious stomach ailment, and she spent much of her time caring for him. Motivated by the urgings of her connections at court, who requested a school for their daughters, and by financial need, in 1881 Utako was opened her house as a private school for girls over 10 years old. She taught poetry and Chinese classics to the wives of a number of ex-samurai officials. She would interrupt a lecture to tend to her husband when he called her.

In 1883, the empress decided to found a school for educating girls of the nobility, the Kazoku Jogakkō (later merged with the Gakushūin). Utako initially did not participate on grounds of her huband's health. Takeo died in 1884 and Utako threw herself into her work as a full-time educator, becoming a teacher and assistant principal at the Girl Peers' School, where she taught ethics and home economics. She also wrote textbooks, starting with a Japanese language textbook published in 1885.

In 1893 and 1894 she went abroad to study noblewomen's education. Her interest in women's education took her to Europe (where she enjoyed an audience with Queen Victoria) and America for two years, returning to Japan in 1895 with fluent English and a raft of new ideas to overhaul Japanese education for women. From 1896, she tutored two daughters of imperial concubine Sachiko Sono: Tsunemiya (Princess Masako Takeda) and Kanemiya (Fusako Kitashirakawa). In 1899 she established Jissen Jogakkō, later Jissen Women's University, for Japanese middle-class women and female Chinese exchange students, and the Joshi Kōgei Gakkō (Women's vocational craft school) for the lower classes. In 1901 she founded the Aikoku Fujinkai, or Patriotic Women's Association, and in 1907 she withdrew from working with the upper classes to concentrate on educating middle- and lower-class women.

Utako Shimoda gave public speeches, which were often printed in women's magazines. She also wrote many women's biographies, believing them important for women's moral education. These included the biographies of Japanese women such as Empress Jingū and Ōbako, Eastern women such as the mother of Mencius, and Western women such as Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, Catherine Gladstone, Hannah Duston, Dolley Madison, Eleanor of Toledo, Mary Ball Washington, and Charlotte Corday. She also helped Asaoka Hajime translate Renaissance educator François Fénelon's work on women's education.

Her Jissen Jogakkō was one of the first Japanese women's schools to take Chinese students, at first all the daughters of expatriates, but from 1903 onwards students also came from China to be educated there. She helped found the Zhouxin She (Society for Renewal) in Shanghai, and her works were published in Mandarin translation in its journal Dalu (Chinese: 大陸).

In 1907, the Heimin Shinbun (Common People's Newspaper) published (over 42 days) an article series called Yōfu Shimoda Utako (妖婦下田歌子, Enchantress Shimoda Utako). It attacked corrupt right-wing politicians by alleging that Shimoda Utako was sexually involved with Itō Hirobumi (a former prime minister), Yamagata Aritomo (another former prime minister, and a military leader), and Inoue Kaoru (a cabinet minister). The issues containing the article series were banned by the government. There were also rumours connecting her to the emperor and Kichisaburō Iino (a politically-powerful Shinto mystic). Utako Shimoda's powerful supporters did not publicly defend her, and in 1906 she had to step down as head of the Gakushūin Women's Academy, giving leadership to the headmaster of the male division, Marusuke Nogi.

In 1990, Utako Shimoda was the subject of the biographical novel centering on this scandal, Mikado no onna (ja:ミカドの淑女, The Emperor's Woman), by Naoki Prize-winning popular author Mariko Hayashi (ja).

Utako Shimoda's vision and work did much to modernise and improve women's education in Japan (she is even responsible for the navy-style girls' school uniform), not just in the realm of improving the mind, but in physical education as well. She was an early colleague and training partner of Jigoro Kano, the founder of modern Judo. She founded three women's schools and wrote over 80 books. She died from pneumonia in 1936, aged 82.

The Shimoda Utako Research Institute for Women is named after her.