Hayashi Utako

Hayashi Utako (林歌子, January 11, 1865 – March 24, 1946; some sources give 1864 as the birth year) was a Japanese educator and social worker. As head of the Osaka branch of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, she led campaigns against businesses serving alcohol in 1909, 1912, and 1916. She was also active in the international woman's peace movement.

Hayashi Utako
A middle-aged Japanese woman, standing in front of a brick wall. She is wearing a simple, dark, kimono jacket, holding a bundle, hands clasped. She wears glasses and her hair is dressed in an updo.
Hayashi Utako, from a 1921 publication.
Born(1865-01-11)January 11, 1865
Ōno, Fukui, Japan
DiedMarch 24, 1946(1946-03-24) (aged 81)
Osaka
NationalityJapanese
Occupation(s)teacher, activist, social worker
Years active1896-1946
Known forTemperance work, and active in international peace movement
In this Japanese name, the surname is Hayashi.

Early life

Hayashi was born in Ōno, Fukui, daughter of a samurai.[1] She trained as a teacher and converted to Christianity in 1887,[2] influenced by the preaching of Tokyo's Anglican bishop, Channing Moore Williams.[3][4][5]

Career

Schools

Hayashi taught at the Episcopal Girls' School of Tokyo as a young woman. She also taught Japanese to foreign missionaries.[2] She became head of the Osaka Hakuaisha Orphanage from 1896,[6] famous for her self-sacrifice in supplying the children of the orphanage with food.[7]

Temperance

Hayashi was president of the Osaka branch of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) from its founding in 1899.[8] In 1907 she opened the Osaka Women's Home, to house working women in the city.[9] She led campaigns against alcohol and prostitution in the Osaka's Sonezaki district in 1909,[10] with further campaigns in 1912 and 1916.[3] In 1922 she and Kubushiro Ochimi attended the World WCTU convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[11] "Next to Mrs. Yajima, the greatest woman in the anti-vice movement is Miss Utako Hayashi," explained an American writer in 1923.[8] Another American visitor called her the "Frances Willard of Japan."[12]

Peace

Hayashi attended the fifth Conference on the Cause and Cure of War, held in Washington D.C. in January 1930, and the London Naval Conference the following month, in the delegation led by Yajima Kajiko. She and Tsuneko Gauntlett presented a petition to British prime minister Ramsay MacDonald, on behalf of the Women's Peace Association of Japan.[11] "We must not only become mothers who care for our own children", she said, "but also become mothers who care for children of the world, wives, older and younger sisters. And we have to recognize that the second restoration must be carried out by women".[13]

As late as 1945, she was listed as president of the Japan WCTU, and of the Japan Christian Women's League.[14]

Personal life

Hayashi was married and divorced when she was a young woman.[1][2] Kanno Sugako described Hayashi as her "spiritual mother".[2] Hayashi died in 1946, aged 81 years, at a care home in Osaka.[4][5]

References
  1. Wentzel, Constance White (1950). The door is open in Japan. Columbia University Libraries. New York, N.Y. : National Council, Protestant Episcopal Church. p. 22.
  2. Sievers, Sharon L. (1983). Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan. Stanford University Press. pp. 144–145. ISBN 9780804713825.
  3. George Gleason, "Can Japanese Be Christians? Stories of Twice-Born Men and Women of Japan" Missionary Review of the World (May 1921): 379-381.
  4. 久布白落実 (1989). 貴女は誰?: 伝記林歌子 (in Japanese). 東京: 大空社. OCLC 21304215.
  5. "Prominent Churchwoman Dies". The Living Church. 112: 7. June 30, 1946.
  6. Bull, Leila (April 1922). "The Widely Loving Society, Osaka, Japan". The Spirit of Missions: 227–229.
  7. Erickson, Lois Johnson (1923). The White Fields of Japan: Being Some Account of the History and Conditions in Japan and of the Mission of the Presbyterian Church in the United States There from 1885 to the Present Day. Presbyterian Committee of Publication. pp. 139–140.
  8. DeForest, Charlotte Burgis (1923). The Woman and the Leaven in Japan. Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions. pp. 196–198.
  9. Ogawa, Manako (2004). "Rescue Work for Japanese Women: The Birth and Development of the Jiaikan Rescue Home and the Missionaries of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Japan, 1886-1921". U.S.-Japan Women's Journal (26): 98–133. ISSN 2330-5037. JSTOR 42771913.
  10. Lublin, Elizabeth Dorn (2010-04-23). Reforming Japan: The Woman's Christian Temperance Union in the Meiji Period. UBC Press. ISBN 9780774859318.
  11. Ogawa, Manako (2007). "The "White Ribbon League of Nations" Meets Japan: The Trans-Pacific Activism of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1906–1930"*"". Diplomatic History. 31 (1): 21–50. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7709.2007.00601.x. ISSN 0145-2096. JSTOR 24916019.
  12. Lamott, Willis C. (Willis Church) (1934). Suzuki looks at Japan [microform]. Internet Archive. New York : Friendship Press. p. 164.
  13. Utako Hayashi, "Kokai-jo: Gunshuku Kaigi kara Kaette (Open Letter: Coming Back from the Disarmament Congress)," Yomiuri Shimbun (1 May 1930): 5; Included in How Did Japanese Women Peace Activists Interact with European Women as they Negotiated between Nationalism and Transnational Peace Activism to Promote Peace, 1915-1935?, Documents selected and interpreted by Taeko Shibahara. (Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2011).
  14. United States Department of the Army (1945). Civil Affairs Handbook, Japan Prefectural Studies, Tokyo-to. War Department. pp. 253, 299.
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