Takako Day

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Hisa Nagano and Natsu Sakaki

In June 1886, Mary Clement Leavitt, the first representative of the worldwide missionaries of the WCTU, came to Japan. Leavitt gave lectures on a circuit from Tokyo to Nagasaki for six months and had an immense influence on Japanese Christians.　

Leavitt gave a lecture in Kyoto as well. Orramel Gulick of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions had introduced her to Hiromichi Kozaki, future president of Doshisha English School, and Kozaki became an adherent to the principle of temperance. “The work being done by Mrs. Leavitt in Kyoto will further ...

According to The Encyclopedia of Chicago, Chicago “has been and remains a world-class religious center with global influence.”¹ Beginning in the mid-19^th century, Japan was one of the foreign countries on which Chicago had a strong impact on, in the form of modern education.

Female Missionaries from Illinois and Women’s Education in Japan

When the Meiji era began in Japan in 1868, Japanese elites with overseas experience understood the necessity of educating women to strengthen the nation. Despite their awareness, the new Meiji educational system, which started in 1872, emphasized and promoted education for boys only. In ...

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Changing Demographics

As a result of escalating anti-Japanese discrimination on the West Coast in the early 20th century, Chicago saw a new influx of young adult Nisei who had been born in other areas such as Hawaii, Utah, California, and Arkansas. The demographics of Japanese Chicago began to change as a result of social and generational shifts.

Among the newcomers, the Hawaii Nisei were the biggest group, totaling seven people according to the 1920 Census. One of them was Isamu Tashiro, a dentist, who was born in Hawaii in 1895, came to Chicago at age 16, and ...

In Japanese American history, Chicago is known as one of the primary urban relocation areas for those who were incarcerated in American concentration camps during World War II. The earliest wave of resettlement, composed mostly of Nisei, arrived in Chicago in June of 1942, although some “voluntary resettlers” were said to have arrived as early as March of that year.¹ Since then, the relocation and resettlement history of Japanese Americans has been carefully recorded and researched by scholars, writers, and journalists. However, their discussion of the last 75 years makes it seem as if the history of the Chicago ...

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Evidence of Michitaro’s residence in the Midwest can be found in the Naniwa church, a congregational church in Osaka, Japan. Archived there are letters from Michitaro sent by him from Woodstock, Illinois, to Umanoshin Sawayama in Evanston, Illinois. Sawayama had come to the US in 1872 and was the first Japanese student at Northwestern University preparatory school.¹ Sawayama had been sent to Evanston by Daniel Greene, the congregational missionary from Kobe, Japan. Why Evanston? Because Greene’s brother Samuel and sister Anna both lived in Evanston. They took care of Sawayama for four years until ...