Hani Motoko (1873-1957)
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senzenwomenHani Motoko was born in 1873 as Matsuoka Motoko in far-northern Aomori, where her father was a former samurai; he left the family in disgrace when she was small, having lost the status he gained by marrying in when his disporting with local geisha became public (as a child Motoko would stride into the geisha house and sit down right next to her father as he drank, refusing the sweets offered her by the madam, until he could be dragged home). From early on she was a determined student who did not accept what she was taught at face value: “all right, one plus one is two, but why is it?”
After graduating from the local girls’ school, she moved on to study in Tokyo with the support of her education-mad grandfather (it took five days on a sled to Sendai, the nearest big city, and from there a day on the train). She eventually enrolled in the Meiji Girls’ School in order to study with its principal Iwamoto Yoshiharu (husband of Wakamatsu Shizuko), editor of the magazine Jogaku Zasshi [Women’s Learning], a liberal, Christian, quasi-feminist organ of which Motoko was a devoted reader. She earned her dormitory fees by working as a proofreader for the magazine.
In 1893 she returned to the north to teach elementary school, where she fell into a brief marriage which lasted only six months, apparently due to her husband’s dissolute ways (or possibly to his mother’s refusal to accept Motoko as his wife); they met by correspondence and she may not have known what he was like until meeting him in person. Another theory is that she married him thinking she could change him and found out she was wrong. Later she called it her “first love (I’d rather not think of it as a marriage).”
Afterward, she went back to Tokyo and found a home with the doctor Yoshioka Yayoi as a live-in maid. Yayoi and her husband were helpful in finding work better suited to Motoko’s abilities: after another stint as an elementary school teacher, in 1898 she went to work for the Hochi Shimbun newspaper as Japan’s first woman reporter, or at least one of the very earliest (originally hired as a proofreader, having bluffed her way past the gender barrier on the strenght of her work, she wrote articles on spec that impressed the editors enough to let her move up). Her articles tended to focus on often-neglected social and women’s issues.
Three years later, Motoko married her colleague Hani Yoshikazu, seven years younger than she; the two subsequently left the paper to found their own magazine, Katei no Tomo [Household Friend] (later Fujin no Tomo [Housewife’s Friend]. Written by Motoko and managed by Yoshikazu, the magazine was full of interviews, accounts from readers, and housekeeping hints (including Motoko’s rational template for keeping a household budget), which brought it immediate popularity.
Their oldest daughter Setsuko was born in 1903, followed by Keiko in 1909 (a middle daughter died young). In 1921 Motoko and her husband, realizing they couldn’t find a school where they wanted to enroll their children, founded the Jiyu Gakuen [Free School, named based on the Biblical quotation “the truth shall set you free”], originally aimed at girls from age twelve to nineteen, offering a liberal education not in accordance with government regulations or the “mechanical” rote education then prevalent (the more things change). The students met in “family groups” of five rather than classes, cleaned their own rooms and made their own meals, and studied according to their interests. The only hitch was that tuition and meal costs were high, meaning that the students came uniformly from well-to-do families. However, the school gained considerable social recognition for its students' volunteering to help the disaster-afflicted, including in the wake of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. The school kept its “Free” name throughout World War II, in spite of governmental pressure, and retains it today (it now runs from kindergarten through college, coeducational although with separate boys/girls sections for junior high and high school).
Hani Yoshikazu died in 1955 and Motoko followed him in 1957, aged eighty-three. Her reflections on life included “There are two forces in life: ‘give it a try’ and ‘it won’t work anyway.’ You’ve got to choose one or the other.” Her younger daughter Keiko took over the school after her parents’ deaths, while Setsuko became a feminist writer and activist; Setsuko’s son Susumu and his daughter Mio were both film directors, and Susumu’s sister Kyoko was a music educator.
Sources
Nakae, Ishii, Mori 1996, Shimamoto
https://www.fujinnotomo.co.jp/about/life/ (Japanese) Very cute photos of Motoko and her husband in their youth
https://jiyu.jp/ (Japanese) Photos of the Jiyu Gakuen school, including the dazzling Myonichikan designed by Frank Lloyd Wright
After graduating from the local girls’ school, she moved on to study in Tokyo with the support of her education-mad grandfather (it took five days on a sled to Sendai, the nearest big city, and from there a day on the train). She eventually enrolled in the Meiji Girls’ School in order to study with its principal Iwamoto Yoshiharu (husband of Wakamatsu Shizuko), editor of the magazine Jogaku Zasshi [Women’s Learning], a liberal, Christian, quasi-feminist organ of which Motoko was a devoted reader. She earned her dormitory fees by working as a proofreader for the magazine.
In 1893 she returned to the north to teach elementary school, where she fell into a brief marriage which lasted only six months, apparently due to her husband’s dissolute ways (or possibly to his mother’s refusal to accept Motoko as his wife); they met by correspondence and she may not have known what he was like until meeting him in person. Another theory is that she married him thinking she could change him and found out she was wrong. Later she called it her “first love (I’d rather not think of it as a marriage).”
Afterward, she went back to Tokyo and found a home with the doctor Yoshioka Yayoi as a live-in maid. Yayoi and her husband were helpful in finding work better suited to Motoko’s abilities: after another stint as an elementary school teacher, in 1898 she went to work for the Hochi Shimbun newspaper as Japan’s first woman reporter, or at least one of the very earliest (originally hired as a proofreader, having bluffed her way past the gender barrier on the strenght of her work, she wrote articles on spec that impressed the editors enough to let her move up). Her articles tended to focus on often-neglected social and women’s issues.
Three years later, Motoko married her colleague Hani Yoshikazu, seven years younger than she; the two subsequently left the paper to found their own magazine, Katei no Tomo [Household Friend] (later Fujin no Tomo [Housewife’s Friend]. Written by Motoko and managed by Yoshikazu, the magazine was full of interviews, accounts from readers, and housekeeping hints (including Motoko’s rational template for keeping a household budget), which brought it immediate popularity.
Their oldest daughter Setsuko was born in 1903, followed by Keiko in 1909 (a middle daughter died young). In 1921 Motoko and her husband, realizing they couldn’t find a school where they wanted to enroll their children, founded the Jiyu Gakuen [Free School, named based on the Biblical quotation “the truth shall set you free”], originally aimed at girls from age twelve to nineteen, offering a liberal education not in accordance with government regulations or the “mechanical” rote education then prevalent (the more things change). The students met in “family groups” of five rather than classes, cleaned their own rooms and made their own meals, and studied according to their interests. The only hitch was that tuition and meal costs were high, meaning that the students came uniformly from well-to-do families. However, the school gained considerable social recognition for its students' volunteering to help the disaster-afflicted, including in the wake of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. The school kept its “Free” name throughout World War II, in spite of governmental pressure, and retains it today (it now runs from kindergarten through college, coeducational although with separate boys/girls sections for junior high and high school).
Hani Yoshikazu died in 1955 and Motoko followed him in 1957, aged eighty-three. Her reflections on life included “There are two forces in life: ‘give it a try’ and ‘it won’t work anyway.’ You’ve got to choose one or the other.” Her younger daughter Keiko took over the school after her parents’ deaths, while Setsuko became a feminist writer and activist; Setsuko’s son Susumu and his daughter Mio were both film directors, and Susumu’s sister Kyoko was a music educator.
Sources
Nakae, Ishii, Mori 1996, Shimamoto
https://www.fujinnotomo.co.jp/about/life/ (Japanese) Very cute photos of Motoko and her husband in their youth
https://jiyu.jp/ (Japanese) Photos of the Jiyu Gakuen school, including the dazzling Myonichikan designed by Frank Lloyd Wright
