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(★)([英文版] 津田梅子／ Translated by Tani Yu／ Japan´s five-thousand-yen banknote will have a new face as of 2024, and that face is TSUDA Umeko (1864-1929), who devoted her life to the eduation of Japanese women. Umeko founded one of Japan´s first schools of higher education for women --a school that later became Tsuda College. Half a century after her death, an old trunk in the college attic was found to contain hundreds of personal letters written by Umeko to her foster mother in America, Adeline Lanman.／ Umeko had been sent to America as a young child to learn English and the ways of Western civilization. She returned to Japan at eighteen, completely Americanized and a stranger in her own country. The ´attic letters´ are a fascinating chronicle of her repatriation to late-nineteenth century Japan, and of her encounters with iconic figures such as Japan´s first prime minister ITO Hirobumi.／ This book shows how the passionate young girl metamorphosed into one of Japan´s foremost educators, by following the thoughts of Umeko herself as she recorded them in her letters. The story is told by OBA Minako, a writer who graduated from Tsuda College and was herself a returnee to Japan after a decade in the United States.／ ´Tsuda Umeko´ was awarded the 42nd Yomiuri Prize for Literature in 1990.／ ◆OBA Minako was born in Tokyo on November 11, 1930. She graduated from Tsuda College in 1953 with a degree in English literature, then married and moved to the United States in 1959 when her husband took a position as a chemical engineer in Sitka, Alaska. She and her family lived there until 1970.／ In 1968, her debut novel, ´Sanbiki no kani (Three Crabs)´ won the Akutagawa Prize, a prestigious literary prize awarded to new authors, thus opening her way to a writing career. Apart from several dozen novels, she wrote essays, literary criticism, poetry, and a play, and co-edited a number of literary anthologies. She also translated children´s books from English into Japanese and Japanese classics into modern Japanese.／ Oba was awarded numerous prizes, including the Women Writer´s Prize for ´Garakuta hakubutsukan (The Museum of Odds and Ends) in 1975, the Tanizaki Prize for ´Katachi mo naku (Without Form)´ in 1982, the Noma Prize for ´Naku tori no (Of Birds Crying)´ in 1986, the Yomiuri Prize for Literature for ´Tsuda Umeko´ in 1990, and the Murasaki Shikibu Literary Prize for ´Urayasu uta nikki (Urayasu Poem Diary)´ in 2003. She played an active role in the Japanese literary world and served as the first female member of the Akutagawa Prize selection committee, vice president of the Japan P.E.N. Club, and head of the Women Writer´s Association. She was elected to the Japan Art Academy in 1991.／ A number of her novels and short stories have been translated into Western languages, including the novels ´Three Crabs´, ´Of Birds Crying´, and ´Urashimaso´ in English ; ´Traume fischen´ and ´Tanze, Schneck, Tanz´ in German ; and ´L´ile sans enfants and Larmes de princesse´ in French.／ OBA Minako died on May 24, 2007. She was seventy-six years old.) |
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