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"Hull-House" in Downtown Tokyo: the Transplantation of a Settlement House from the United States into Japan and the North American Missionary Women, 1919–1945
Manako Ogawa
University of Hawai'i, Manoa
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"ONE out of every three babies dies down there."
1
This remark, made by John Marle Davis (1895–1960) of the Young
Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in Japan, deeply shocked his
audience, the North American missionaries of the Japanese Woman's
Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). The shocking results of his investigation
in slum districts of downtown Tokyo "struck fire in the hearts of
forty Tokyo women" and inspired them to undertake a new project
to remedy the hardships of the slums where social problems were
most concentrated.
2
Soon they rented land in Matsukurachō
of Honjo Ward, Tokyo, spread straw mats on the ground, erected a
straw matting roof for shade, and opened a kindergarten for the
children of very poor families in 1919.
3
This small kindergarten was the beginning of the Kōbōkan
kan, or the "Door of Hope," named by Kubushiro Ochimi, an executive
of the Japanese WCTU.
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The staff members dreamed that the Kbōkan
would develop into a "miniature copy of Hull-House by Jane Addams."
5
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The Kōbōkan settlement was a product of the North American missionary women
who joined the Japanese WCTU and engaged in social reform work with
Japanese women. As the quote above indicates, the Kōbōkan
kan began its history with a reference to the settlement movements
in the United States represented by Jane Addams's Hull-House.
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When they saw Japan's rapid industrialization and urbanization in
the early decades of the twentieth century, they also found that
these processes produced various negative by-products evidenced
by the rapid formation of slums in urban areas. Creating a "Hull-House"
and starting settlement works seemed a desirable choice to improve
the conditions for the working class people of their host nation.
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The settlement movements in the United
States have received rich scholarly attention, yet it has been overlooked
that the social reform ideologies and practices of Progressive America
were spread to the other side of the Pacific Ocean by missionaries.
Through examining negotiations over the programs and management
of their settlement house, Kōbōkan, this essay reveals what in particular enabled or hindered its
smooth expansion and acceptance by the Japanese from the late 1910s
until the end of the Pacific War. This essay also sheds light on
the multilayered interactions between its staff members, both the
North American missionaries and Japanese, with working-class Japanese
as well as with government authorities, gigantic capitalists, and
the imperial household, all of whom were the backbone of Japan's
empire. Through examination of exchanges among North American missionaries
and the Japanese from various class and social backgrounds, this
essay explores the process of how a settlement house, imported from
the United States and transformed to cope with the social, cultural,
and political environments peculiar to Japan, took root in Japan
between 1919 and 1945.
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