Episode 18: Umeko Tsuda - A Person Who Cannot Be Contained in Any Mold

─ The Position of Umeko Tsuda

What was the six-year-old girl looking at on the ship?

In 1871, Umeko Tsuda headed to America as one of the female students accompanying the Iwakura Mission.

It was an era when just crossing the ocean was a life-threatening endeavor. Moreover, she was only six years old.

Of course, it was not Umeko herself who made that choice. Her father applied, there was a national plan, and Umeko boarded the ship.

During the long voyage across the Pacific, how much did the young Umeko understand about where she was heading?

■ The Language Left Behind

Life in America continued for a long time.

In Georgetown, near Washington, Umeko was placed with a local family and grew up surrounded by English.

The words for meals, the words for school, and the words for prayer all gradually became English.

And eleven years later.

Seventeen-year-old Umeko returned to Japan.

However, by that time, Umeko could hardly speak Japanese anymore.

It is said that her father and sister served as interpreters, and that she wrote her lecture drafts in English first before translating them into Japanese.

Even though she had returned to Japan, the Japanese language felt distant.

What must that feeling have been like?

The atmosphere of the home she returned to after so long. The family conversations. The silence at the dinner table.

Perhaps there was a feeling that she alone was a little behind.

■ Within the Country She Returned To

However, it seems it was not just the language that bewildered Umeko.

In Meiji-era Japan, the status of women was still quite limited.

Within the home, the father held the highest position, and men were given priority for meals and baths. Women were expected to protect the home, and being treated as an individual was not yet the norm.

It is said that for Umeko, who grew up in America, that atmosphere felt strongly out of place.

However, I do not want to simply frame this as,

"The West was advanced, and Japan was backward."

That is not the story I want to tell.

Perhaps Umeko herself, even while in America, was not entirely a "person from over there" either.

In Japan, she was called someone who had "returned from America," and in America, she was seen as "the girl from Japan."

Standing in both places, yet never fully fitting into either.

Ume may have been a person who stood in such a space for a long time.

■ Time spent in limbo

After returning to Japan, Umeko was not immediately given a role.

Despite having sent her abroad at the state's expense, the government had not prepared a clear job for her.

Eventually, she began teaching English at the Peeresses' School, but that was not a path decided from the start either.

Rather, it seems that for a while after returning home, Umeko was searching for her own place to stand.

Sent abroad by a national plan, returned home for the convenience of the state, yet the country she returned to did not know how to treat her.

The Meiji era itself must have still been in flux.

The samurai had vanished, Western systems were being introduced, and the very shape of the nation was being rewritten.

Umeko, too, may have been one of the people caught in that turbulence.

■ Crossing the Ocean Once More

1889.

Umeko traveled to the United States again.

This time, it was to study women's education in earnest.

While studying biology at Bryn Mawr College, she gradually began to give shape to what she truly wanted to do.

After returning to Japan, in 1900, she founded the Joshi Eigaku Juku (Women's Institute for English Studies).

This later became Tsuda University.

This event is often spoken of as the work of a "pioneer in women's education."

Of course, that is not wrong.

However, I find myself thinking about something else entirely.

I wonder if Umeko tried to create a new place precisely because she could not fully fit into any existing one herself.

A person who thought in English, lived in Japanese, and could not fully belong to either.

She tried to create a place where she could think, "I can breathe here," for the next generation.

When I think of it that way, the outline of the Joshi Eigaku Juku begins to look a little different.

■ In the Atmosphere of the Meiji Era

Education seems to be more than just opening doors.

It is about unlocking someone's potential, while at the same time passing the shape of society on to the next generation.

I feel that Umeko understood both of these things.

She had to teach freedom while operating a school within a system.

She had to nurture individuals while being unable to remain unaffected by the currents of national modernization.

Amidst those contradictions, Umeko stood quietly.

Without leaning completely toward either side.

■ A person who cannot be contained

Even in modern society, there are times when people feel they do not fully belong anywhere.

Hometown and city. Japanese and foreign languages. Home and work. Man and woman. Inside and outside.

It is not a matter of simply choosing one or the other; before you know it, you are standing on the boundary.

Looking at the life of Umeko Tsuda, one begins to think that standing in such a place may not necessarily be a 'weakness'.

Rather, there is a view that can only be seen by those who stand in that place.

The girl who crossed the ocean at the age of six seems to have lived her life until the very end, always slightly overflowing from any single frame.

And from within that 'overflow,' she was quietly trying to create a place for the next generation.

Perhaps it was precisely because she could never quite find a place for herself that she wanted to give others a place where they could stand with peace of mind.

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─ Late-Night History Lounge ─

You can read other articles in this series here.
https://note.com/asukaji2026/m/mf67bf0d195d0