Early Life
Haruko Hatoyama was born in Matsumoto, the youngest of seven children (five girls and two boys). Her father, Tsumu, was a samurai. He changed the family name from Watanabe to Taga after the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Her education began at home with her mother, and was supplemented by the lessons from local teachers of Chinese classics. Her education was different than her sisters because she was allowed to pursue the same curriculum as a boy. She was among the first students to enroll when a small, all-girls school opened in Matsumoto in 1973. However, her knowledge was so advanced that her father decided to pull her out of the small school and take her to Tokyo to be educated.
She attended the Takebashi Girls' School, which had been opened by the government in 1872 for the purpose of training female teachers. Her lessons were held both in her native Japanese dialect and in American English. After the government closed the school in 1877, the Education Ministry transferred her and her classmates to a newly established English section within the Tokyo Women's Normal School. She graduated in 1878.
She continued her education by enrolling the Tokyo Women's Higher Normal School. In 1879, she was one of three students selected by the Ministry of Education to study in the United States. She graduated in July 1881, and briefly joined the faculty until she got married, at which point she resigned.
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