Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey From East to West and Back (34 page)

The rising tide of traditionalism had caused enthusiasm for Western ideas in government-run schools (especially for girls) to ebb; still, the need for English instruction remained. By opening a private school, Ume could both supply an undeniable demand and hold open a window on the West for her countrywomen. She believed, she confided to Anna, that her reputation would draw enough students and supporters to make her project a success. She was not ready to start quite yet, but when the time came, would Anna return to Tokyo and help? Anna was thirty-seven years old, free of family obligations and in possession of a prodigious intellect: like Alice Bacon, she had passed Harvard’s Examinations for Women with high credit. Her bond with Ume was precious. “With grateful enthusiasm,” she wrote later, “I promised that I would.”

I
N HER MIDTHIRTIES
now, a confirmed career woman at last safe from the nagging of marriage-minded friends (as Alice had predicted), Ume had begun to widen her focus beyond the Peeresses’ School and the American Women’s Scholarship to larger questions of educational policy in Japan. She published her experiences and opinions in the English-language press: an account of her childhood journey to America for the
Chicago Record
; a
lengthy article on the importance of women’s education in the
Far East
, the English edition of Tokutomi Soho’s popular news magazine. Another
Far East
essay called for stronger marriage and divorce laws and an end to concubinage. Enlightened women would surely not accept a status quo that expected them to share their husbands with other women. “One trembles to think of the future,” Ume wrote, “if, through the broadening of their mental horizon, greater discontent and unrest come to women in their homes, and they forget that it is their noblest mission to guard the perfect peace of the home, even though in so doing, they are themselves sacrificed.”

Ume’s message was consistent: women needed education not to challenge men, but to better help them. “Without culture, education, and experience,” she wrote, “women can only share the lowest side of a man’s life and must indeed fall short of the ideal wife and mother.” As a side note, she recommended that every woman seek proficiency in a skill that might win her an income, should misfortune require her to earn one. “This may be in anything suited to her tastes and capacities, in teaching, writing, nursing, cooking, or sewing,” Ume explained, outlining a woman’s sphere with a rather small diameter. (By the late 1890s, there were women in Japan who had pushed the boundaries further; Ginko Ogino, Japan’s first female doctor, had become certified in 1885, and private medical colleges in Japan were beginning to allow female students to audit classes.)

Acquiring a useful skill need not indicate unwomanly inclinations; on the contrary, “such an acquisition not only takes the place of, but is better often than, the richest dowry.” Ume must have thought of Shige, whose teaching salary had tided over her family during periods when her husband was ill. The thought that other women might actively choose a life like Ume’s, full of work but empty of husband or children, never entered the argument. Her career in education was, paradoxically, dedicated to the perfection of the domestic.

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 prayers 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.”

S
UTEMATSU MISSED
U
ME
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.