Mary Patterson Elkinton Nitobe

Mary Patterson Elkinton Nitobe (1857-1938) was an American-Quaker, the wife of the Japanese economist Nitobe Inazō.[1]

Mary Nitobe
Mary Nitobe
With husband Nitobe Inazo (1932)

Life

Mary Patterson Elkinton was born in 1857 to a prominent Quaker family in Philadelphia. She met Nitobe Inazō in Baltimore, and against the wishes of both their families, married him in 1891. Their only child died in infancy, but they adopted Nitobe's nephew, Yoshio, and a female relative Kotoko.[2][3]

Living in Japan, which she considered her home, she contributed to educational reform, worked to improve US-Japan relations, advocated internationalism and helped to establish several schools. She helped her husband in the writing of his 1899 book, Bushidô, The Soul of Japan. When her husband served in the League of Nations at Geneva she was active in international circles. After they returned to Tokyo in the late 1920s, she found Japanese militarism in conflict with her Quakerism.[3]

After her husband's death she edited his reminiscences, and continued to live in Japan. She died on 22 September 1938.[4]

Papers of both Mary and Inzo Nitobe are held at Swarthmore College.[2]

Works
  • (ed. with introduction and comments) Reminiscences of childhood in the early days of modern Japan by Nitobe Inazō, 1934

References
  1. George M. Oshiro, 'Mary P. E. Nitobe and Japan', Quaker History, Vol. 86, No. 2 (Fall 1997), pp. 1–15. JSTOR 41947357
  2. An Inventory of the Inazo Nitobe Papers, 1890-2005, Swarthmore College.
  3. Sharlie Ushioda, Marriage in Meiji/Taisho Japan: Inazo and Mary Elkinton Nitobe, American Historical Association, 2015.
  4. MRS. INAZO NITOBE; Widow of Japanese Statesman Was Native of Philadelphia, The New York Times, 23 September 1938. Accessed 14 March 2020.
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