Tsuda Umeko - Return To Japan

Return To Japan

By the time Tsuda returned to Japan in 1882, she had almost forgotten Japanese, which caused temporary difficulties. She also experienced cultural problems adjusting to the inferior position of women in Japanese society. Even her father, Tsuda Sen, who was radically westernized in many ways, was still traditionally patriarchal and authoritarian vis-à-vis women.

Tsuda was hired by Itō Hirobumi to be a tutor for his children. In 1885, she then began to work in a girls' school for the daughters of the kazoku peerage, but she was not satisfied by the restriction of educational opportunities to within the peerage and nobility, and she was not satisfied with the school policy that education was intended to polish girls as ladies and train them to be obedient wives and good mothers. She was assisted from 1888 by a friend from her days in America, Alice Bacon, from 1888. She decided to return to the United States.

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