Who holds the distinction of being Japan’s first female doctor? Depending on how you look at it, two women can lay claim to the title. What’s indisputable is that both Ogino Ginko and Kusumoto Ine broke with the traditions of their times and blazed a path forward for women in Japanese medicine.
Ogino Ginko
Widely known as Japan’s first female doctor, she was actually the first licensed female doctor of Western medicine. Ogino Ginko was born to a well-to-do family in present-day Kumagaya, Saitama, in 1851.
At 16, she married Inamura Kanichiro, the son of another well-off Saitama family. As was the custom, their parents arranged the marriage. It was not a happy one.
A humiliating ordeal
Ogino’s husband contracted gonorrhea from brothel visits and passed the disease to his new wife. At the time, STDs were seen as a disease of sex workers, and afflicted women were treated unkindly by medical establishments. It was also pre-antibiotics, so treatment was long and less effective.
Ogino suffered much humiliation during her two years of treatment. Traditional Chinese herbal remedies did little to help. She was finally successfully treated with Western medicine, which sparked a fascination in her. Still, she felt embarrassed that her only option was to submit to countless gynecological exams from unsympathetic male doctors.
Once fully recovered, Ogino decided she wanted a divorce and to become a doctor. Despite what she had endured during her illness, divorce was considered shameful. She was harshly judged for it, but her mother supported her decision and helped facilitate it.
Her choice to become a doctor was less popular with her parents. They refused to help her with that endeavor.
The path to becoming a doctor
In 1875, she enrolled in the Tokyo Womenโs Normal School (now Ochanomizu University) as part of its first cohort. Up until that point, she had no formal education, but she thrived and was one of only 15 women to complete the program out of 74.
Now that she possessed the fundamentals, her next goal was medical school. She added the ko to her name around this time, in defiance of short names for women.
Unfortunately, there were no medical schools for women in Japan. She could have opted to study at a women’s college abroad. However, that would have required a command of English and a lowering of standards. Women-only medical schools were not as rigorous or well-taught as male schools.
Eschewing that option, she instead appealed to her teachers at the Women’s Normal School and a prominent doctor. They helped her gain admittance to Kojuin Medical School in 1880.
No precedent for a female doctor
She completed her studies in 1882 but faced more obstacles to becoming a doctor.
Since she graduated from a private university, she needed to take a licensing exam before she could practice medicine. The sanitation board twice refused her application to sit for the exam. Unsurprisingly, her male classmates had no such issue.
Ogino was a fierce advocate for herself. Enlisting the help of doctors and businessmen to support her cause, she pointed out that it was unfair that public schools, which women could not attend, did not need to take a licensing exam.
She called back to her own traumatic experience of receiving treatment from male doctors. How having available women doctors would encourage women not to avoid treatment for fear of embarrassment.
Her final trump card was to present documentation discussing the laws around female doctors in the Nara period. This documentation proved a historical precedent for female doctors in Japan.
Her arguments were convincing. She and 3 other women were allowed to sit for the exam. Only Ogino passed.
Her own practice
After passing the medical exam, Ogino set up her own Gynecological and Obstetrics clinic in Yushima, Tokyo. Her clinic was very popular, and she became renowned. She took on a position as a lecturer at Meiji Women’s School and became involved with many women’s rights groups. She also converted to Christianity, joining the temperance movement. Like its Western counterpart, Japan’s temperance movement advocated against alcohol use and its destructive influence on society.
While she was at the very pinnacle of her fame, she gave it all up for love. She married a younger man who shared her religious fervor, Shikata Yukiyoshi. Ogino was infertile because of her earlier illness, but the couple adopted Shikata’s niece after his sister tragically died in childbirth.
Shikata was a minister and utopian who moved to Hokkaido to set up his ideal Christian society. Ogino decided to give up her practice and follow him there. She provided medical care but did not keep up with the latest medical practices. The settlement eventually failed, and Ogino set up a small practice in Hokkaido, but it never met with the same success.
Later Years
In 1906, her husband died, and Ogino returned to Tokyo a few years later. She opened a small clinic upon her return and worked there until her death in 1913 at age 62. Her grave is located in Zoshigaya Cemetery in Toshima ward.
Kusumoto Ine
While Ogino Ginko may have been Japan’s first licensed female physician of Western medicine, she was not the first woman to become a Western doctor. That distinction belongs to Kusumoto Ine, who began her studies while Japan was still isolated.
Dejima Island
Kusamoto was born Shiimoto (a Japanese variation of Siebold) Ine in 1827 on the island of Dejima in present-day Nagasaki.
Her father was a prominent German physician, Phillip Franz von Siebold. Siebold was on Dejima to teach Western medicine as outside scientific information was still highly sought during the isolation period. Her mother Kusamoto Taki, was a courtesan, sent over from mainland Nagasaki to be Siebold’s concubine.
In 1829, authorities caught Siebold exporting geographic secrets and maps abroad, which he received from the mainland. This information posed a serious risk to Japan from neighboring countries, and Siebold was banished.
Taki and young Ine could not leave Japan with him. Despite his banishment, he made sure they had sufficient goods to trade and that associates on the island took care of them. Shortly after this, Taki remarried to a local man.
An unconventional education
While in Germany, Siebold continued to look out for his daughter. He sent her books on the Dutch language, essential for learning Western information in Japan. He pressed upon his former colleagues and students to tutor and teach her. At around 15, she ran away to learn medicine under the tutelage of one of her father’s students, Ninomiya Keisaku.
In 1845, she began more formal training in obstetrics under another of her father’s students, Ishii Soken. While under his tutelage, he impregnated her in 1851. She gave birth to a daughter, her only child, in 1852. She named her daughter Tada, meaning free of charge, as she said she received her child from heaven for free.
The reality was far more harsh. According to Tada’s biography of Ine, her conception was not consensual and was the product of assault. Because of his crimes against her, Kusumoto cut all ties with Isshii and refused to allow him a relationship with her daughter. Ishii also faced backlash from other Siebold students who felt that he’d sullied the daughter of their revered teacher.
After the birth of her daughter, Kusumoto continued to pursue her education in medicine. Leaving her young child in the care of her mother, she began her studies with a local doctor, Abe Roan.
In 1854, along with his nephew, Mise Shuzo, she traveled to Uwajima Ehime to resume studies with her original teacher, Ninomiya. She studied there for two years before they all returned to Nagasaki when Ninomiya had a stroke.
The end of seclusion
In 1854, Japan also ended its over 250 years of seclusion. Now an open country, Kusumoto’s father Sieblold returned to Japan with his teenage son Alexander in tow. Another son, Heinrich, had already come to Japan of his own accord.
Kusumoto moved in with her father and brothers while continuing to improve her medical knowledge, but the relationship was fraught. Siebold often derided Kusumoto’s Dutch abilities, and she took umbrage with him impregnating one of the maids.
Kusumoto eventually left her father’s home. Siebold was forced to leave Japan for good in 1861.
She maintained her connection to Mise Shuzo, relying on his Dutch abilities. With the help of her father’s reputation, she was able to build a client base and gain introductions to prominent Dutch doctors like J.L.C. Pompe van Meerdervoort. Van Meedervort opened the first Western hospital and medical school in Japan.
Kusumoto took classes in the women’s ward and assisted in the operation room. She also witnessed a human dissection, the first for a Japanese woman.
Her reputation garnered her the favor of Date Muneari, a former samurai lord, in Uwajima . She previously worked in his court with Ninomiya during the isolation period. Date was a supporter of Western learning and provided her with a stipend.
She was able to set up her practice. In exchange for the stipend, she was on call for the women in the castle and assisted in the births of Date’s wife Yoshiko.
Date also requested that she change her name to Itoku and her daughter’s to Takako. Kusumoto had faced disdain before for being mixed race; he felt the name change could lessen people’s prejudices. Date also helped facilitate a marriage between her daughter and Mise Shuzo.
A move to Tokyo
After the Meiji restoration, the Emperor relocated to Tokyo, and many followed. After the death of her mother, Kusumoto was no longer tied to Nagasaki. So she, too, made the journey to the capital.
Though her father had left, her brothers stayed in Japan. They helped her set up a medical practice in Tokyo. Through Mise, she was able to gain connections to the imperial court.
There, she attended the birth of one of Emperor Meiji’s concubines. Despite her skilled efforts, the child was a stillbirth, and the mother died a few days later. Still, the emperor paid her handsomely for her services.
Kusumoto decided to once again return to Nagasaki and gained a midwife license. There, she opened an obstetrics clinic and served the community.
Kusumoto never took the medical licensing exam. While some feel she refused because she was already 57 years old when women were allowed to sit for the exam, others feel she saw no point. By that time, she’d been a practicing doctor with her own clinic for many years.
Later years
Kusumoto eventually gave up her practice, retiring to Tokyo. She spent her later years living with her brother Heinrich and his family in a well-to-do home he constructed in Azabu.
Kusumoto Ine died in 1903, ostensibly from food poisoning contracted from eating watermelon and eel together. Her life has become legendary in Japan and she is the inspiration for many manga and even a game character.
Conclusion
Ogino and Kusumoto’s legacies carry on in the many Japanese women who continue to fight for roles in the medical field today. Despite advancements, only 23.6% of doctors in Japan are women. They face unfair treatment, like the 2018 medical exam scandal.
However, like these two impressive women, they persevere.
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Sources
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