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Unexpected Destinations
Unexpected Destinations: The Poignant Story of Japan's First Vassar Graduate is a biography of Ōyama Sutematsu, written by her great-granddaughter Akiko Kuno.[1] It was first published in Japan in 1988, with an English translation in 1993.[2] The book includes information from forty letters written by Ōyama to Alice Bacon.[3] Development and publicationAkiko Kuno began to research her great-grandmother's life in 1980. A friend, Nucy Meech, was interested in the first Japanese woman to graduate from an American university; on learning that it was Kuno's own relative, Meech contacted Vassar College for more information, and Vassar's office of Alumni and Alumnae of Vassar College (AAVC) sent Kuno several newspaper articles about Ōyama.[4] After placing an advertisement in Vassar Quarterly seeking information, Kuno found that many papers from Ōyama foster family the Bacons were available at Yale University, and that her letters to Alice Bacon had been preserved by Bacon's descendant Jill Bryant.[5] Kuno travelled to San Francisco in July 1982,[6] and visited several stops from Ōyama's journey with the Iwakura Mission, using Kunitake Kume's published diary Beio Kairan Jikki as her guide.[7] She consulted materials in several libraries in San Francisco;[7] New Haven, Connecticut;[8] Poughkeepsie, New York,[9] and New Brunswick, New Jersey.[10] Kuno interviewed Alice Bacon's nephew Alfred Bacon,[11] and Jill Bryant provided copies of forty letters from Ōyama to Alice Bacon.[10] The resulting book was first published in Japan in 1988, under the title Rokumeikan no kifujin Ōyama Sutematsu: Nihon hatsu no joshi ryūgakusei (The Lady of the Rokumeikan, Ōyama Sutematsu: Japan’s First Female Study Abroad Student).[2] The Japanese edition was a bestseller.[12] An English edition translated by Kirsten McIvor was published in 1993.[2] The Japanese edition was published by Chūō kōronsha, and the English edition by Kodansha International.[2] SynopsisThe book begins with a preface and a description of the author's research process, before presenting a chronological account of Ōyama Sutematsu's life. She was born Yamakawa Sakiko in 1860, and narrowly survived the Battle of Aizu in late 1868. At age eleven, she was one of five Japanese girls sent to be educated in America as part of the Iwakura Mission, in support of the new imperial government's program of rapid modernization. She was placed with the family of Leonard Bacon in New Haven, Connecticut, where she was embraced as one of the family. Her childhood play was athletic and tomboyish. As she grew, she enjoyed substantial academic success in high school and at Vassar College, where she became the first Japanese woman to earn a college degree. After ten years, however, the time came for her to return to Japan, where she found that Japanese society was not as welcoming of an independent, intellectual, Westernized woman as the imperial educational program had expected. More fluent in English than in Japanese, she struggled with the options available to her. Eventually, she married a high-ranking military officer, adopting his children from a prior marriage and having several of her own. For the rest of her life, she supported women's education from behind the scenes, and balanced public causes with the demands of private family life. These later years include her social involvement in the Rokumeikan, a visit from her foster-sister Alice Bacon, a family scandal that became the subject of the best-selling novel The Cuckoo, her husband's involvement in the Russo-Japanese War, and her final withdrawal from public life after her husband's death in 1916. She died in 1919 at the age of sixty, with her final act being the installation of a new principal for the school which eventually became Tsuda University. Kuno closes the book with a brief expression of regret that aristocratic life stifled Ōyama's personality and ambitions.[13] AnalysisIn presenting her great-grandmother's life story, Kuno often discusses the broader ideas of international education, US-Japan relations, and the social roles of women.[14] News coverage of Ōyama often emphasized the glamour of her aristocratic life; Kuno sought to fill a gap by highlighting the value of her education and its effect on diplomatic relations.[14] Kuno herself studied for a year at an American university, and uses her own and her ancestor's experience to argue for the value of foreign study, and to present the personal costs it can carry.[14] The book also indicates some of Ōyama's frustration that, after sacrificing so much to become educated for Japan's benefit, her status as a woman in Japan only allowed her to use that education indirectly through subtle social influence.[3] References
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