Histories of women in and around Japan, 1868-1945

Urata Tada (or Tadako, or Yui) was born in 1873 in present-day Kumamoto, down south in Kyushu, the daughter of a traditional physician and businessman. At seventeen she was married to the son of another local merchant, but either a few months into married life or during the wedding (stories differ), she ran away, leaving a note saying “It’s not that I don’t like you, I just want to study more.” Her would-be husband recognized that she was not going to change her mind, and the marriage was cancelled.

After training as a pharmacist, getting her license in Osaka in 1892, she moved to Tokyo in 1895 and entered the Saisei Gakusha (familiar to us from various other faces here) to study as a doctor. Although there was no shortage of prejudice against women, she was undisturbed (tall even for a man of the time, she dressed as a man for convenience when attending school and enjoyed it when rickshaw drivers asked her “and where would you like to go, sir?”). She was licensed to practice in 1898, having taken only half the normal period of study, thanks in part to her pharmaceutical experience and partly to her habit of staying up to study whenever she woke in the night.

She worked briefly on the study of infectious diseases with Kitasato Shibasaburo, an enormously distinguished doctor and Kumamoto landsman who kept a friendly eye on her throughout her life, before returning to Kyushu in 1899 to practice medicine.

In 1903 Tada went to Germany to study ophthalmology in depth, able to do so in part because of her family’s wealth (she also studied German without marrying her German teacher, unlike Yoshioka Yayoi, who was among the friends seeing her off). Notwithstanding the news of her father’s death during her first year overseas, she went on to earn a doctorate from the University of Marburg in 1905 as not only the first Japanese woman but the first woman of any nationality to do so. Her doctoral thesis (dedicated to her mother and to her father’s memory) was, of course, in German, as were her oral exams. (She later submitted a thesis to the Japanese Ministry of Education and requested a doctoral degree based thereupon, but was rejected on the basis that “there was no precedent for granting doctoral degrees to women” (plus ça change, Japanese bureaucracy).)

Returning to Japan in 1906 (where she received a heroine’s welcome she could have done without), Tada practiced in her hometown, taught at the Gakushuin School for Girls, rejected an offer to serve as physician to the Meiji Emperor, and finally opened an ophthalmology clinic in Tokyo. In 1911 (or maybe 1907?) she married Nakamura Tsunesaburo, also a doctor; the following year they moved to Tianjin, China, where they ran a hospital in the Foreign Concession. Tada was the hospital’s director (her husband managed the pharmacy and the print room); she spoke with her foreign and Chinese patients in English, German, and her newly learned Chinese, eschewing an interpreter and thus gaining her patients’ trust. She also did not hesitate to eat Chinese style as her patients did, including garlic, when the opportunity arose.

As the presence of the war became felt more strongly, Tada’s activities were limited, although she continued to set off in rickshaws to see patients, explaining to Japanese and Chinese soldiers alike that she was a doctor on business. In 1932 her husband died, unexpectedly, of diabetes; Tada blamed herself and questioned her mission as a doctor for being unable to save him, but kept the hospital open until the war made it impossible to do so, later that same year, when she returned to Japan.

She died in 1936. Visitors to Marburg can (I’m told) set foot on “Tada-Urata-Platz” there.

Sources
https://kyusyu-manga.azusashoin.com/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E4%BA%BA%E5%A5%B3%E6%80%A7%E5%88%9D%E3%81%AE%E5%8C%BB%E5%AD%A6%E5%8D%9A%E5%A3%AB%E3%80%80%E5%AE%87%E8%89%AF%E7%94%B0-%E5%94%AF%EF%BC%88%E3%81%86%E3%82%89%E3%81%9F-%E3%81%9F%E3%81%A0/ (Japanese) Excerpt from a manga about Tada’s life
https://www.asahi.com/articles/photo/AS20231128003809.html?iref=pc_photo_gallery_1 (Japanese) Photos (click on the right arrow for more)