Otsuma Kotaka (1884-1970)
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senzenwomenOtsuma Kotaka was born in 1884 in a Hiroshima village, the youngest of six children; her maiden name was Kumada. Because she was born at rice-planting time, she went nameless for five months until her family had a moment to submit a notice of her birth (“Kotaka” is said to have been a dialect corruption of “komatta ko” or “problem child”). Bright and hardworking, orphaned by fourteen, she became an elementary school teacher after finishing what we would now call junior high school, studying sewing on the side.
In 1901 she quit her job and set off for Tokyo, staying with an uncle’s family while she trained in Japanese and Western sewing (she had hoped to study math and physics, but was told it wasn’t womanly) and simultaneously studied for her formal elementary teaching qualifications. A full-fledged teacher by twenty-two, she took up a job in Kamakura.
In 1907 she married Otsuma Ryoma, an ex-military public building contractor who was then thirty-six. They were introduced by a cousin of hers, who ran Kotaka and Ryoma through a simplified marriage ceremony almost before Kotaka had realized that it was anything more than an initial meeting. On their way home, Ryoma invited a horrified Kotaka to visit the Ueno Exposition with him; they explored in silence, ate an awkward bowl of noodles, and he saw her back to her uncle’s house and left her there.
The two eventually did move in together; with Ryoma’s cooperation, Kotaka opened a sewing school in their new house, which became very popular. Eventually, overflowing their downstairs, it became the Tokyo Women’s Handcraft School and then the officially accredited Otsuma School of Handcrafts (whose motto was “Have some shame” or “Don’t be a disgrace”), moving into its own building in 1918. Three years later the school received governmental approval as the Otsuma Higher Girls’ School. In the 1920s and 1930s Kotaka published how-to sewing manuals that became bestsellers.
During the war, an Otsuma education was held up as the model training for ryosai kenbo or the “good wives, wise mothers” considered the Japanese woman’s ideal form. Afterward, Kotaka was purged for some time due to her support for the wartime Japanese government. She was later, however, to receive various imperial awards for her services to education; the Otsuma foundation now includes education for girls from junior high through graduate school, with a focus on home economics. Kotaka died in 1970, incidentally outliving her husband by over forty years.
Sources
Nakae
https://www.otsuma.jp/kotaka (Japanese) Covers of the books Kotaka published.
In 1901 she quit her job and set off for Tokyo, staying with an uncle’s family while she trained in Japanese and Western sewing (she had hoped to study math and physics, but was told it wasn’t womanly) and simultaneously studied for her formal elementary teaching qualifications. A full-fledged teacher by twenty-two, she took up a job in Kamakura.
In 1907 she married Otsuma Ryoma, an ex-military public building contractor who was then thirty-six. They were introduced by a cousin of hers, who ran Kotaka and Ryoma through a simplified marriage ceremony almost before Kotaka had realized that it was anything more than an initial meeting. On their way home, Ryoma invited a horrified Kotaka to visit the Ueno Exposition with him; they explored in silence, ate an awkward bowl of noodles, and he saw her back to her uncle’s house and left her there.
The two eventually did move in together; with Ryoma’s cooperation, Kotaka opened a sewing school in their new house, which became very popular. Eventually, overflowing their downstairs, it became the Tokyo Women’s Handcraft School and then the officially accredited Otsuma School of Handcrafts (whose motto was “Have some shame” or “Don’t be a disgrace”), moving into its own building in 1918. Three years later the school received governmental approval as the Otsuma Higher Girls’ School. In the 1920s and 1930s Kotaka published how-to sewing manuals that became bestsellers.
During the war, an Otsuma education was held up as the model training for ryosai kenbo or the “good wives, wise mothers” considered the Japanese woman’s ideal form. Afterward, Kotaka was purged for some time due to her support for the wartime Japanese government. She was later, however, to receive various imperial awards for her services to education; the Otsuma foundation now includes education for girls from junior high through graduate school, with a focus on home economics. Kotaka died in 1970, incidentally outliving her husband by over forty years.
Sources
Nakae
https://www.otsuma.jp/kotaka (Japanese) Covers of the books Kotaka published.
