Tsune Watanabe was a Japanese educator. She was president of the Congregational Woman's Missionary Society of Japan and head of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Kobe.

Tsune Watanabe
Born
Kobe
NationalityJapanese
Other namesWatanabe Tsune, Tsuneko Watanabe, Watanabe Tsuneko
Occupation(s)Church leader, educator, and temperance activist
Years active1910s, 1920s
Known forPresident of the Congregational Woman's Missionary Society of Japan; active internationally with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union

Early life

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Mrs. Tsuneko Watanabe LOC 23546372123

Watanabe graduated from Kobe Girls' School in 1882, in the school's first graduating class;[1] her teachers were American women from Carleton College. She graduated from Carleton College in 1891,[2] the school's first non-Western graduate.[3]

Career

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Watanabe was president of the Congregational Woman's Missionary Society of Japan and head of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Kobe. She taught at Kobe College for ten years. In 1911 she visited Korea with American missionary Ruth Frances Davis, and organized a chapter of the Japanese WCTU in Seoul.[4][5] The two women went to Taiwan in 1912 to organize Japanese WCTU chapters in Taipei and Tainan.[6][7]

In 1912 she convened the fifth annual meeting of the Woman's Missionary Society at Osaka.[8] In 1917 and 1918 she traveled to New York and Washington, D.C., for the convention of the WCTU.[2][9] Although she was not ordained as a minister, she spent the winter of 1918-1919 in Santa Barbara, California, leading the small Japanese Congregational church in that city.[10] In 1923 she went to Shanghai to start a chapter of the Japanese WCTU.[6]

References

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  1. ^ Ishii, Noriko Kawamura (2004). American Women Missionaries at Kobe College, 1873-1909. Routledge. p. 104. ISBN 9781135936204.
  2. ^ a b "Miss Watanabe in America" Life and Light for Woman (April 1918): 148.
  3. ^ "Tsune Watanabe". Center for Global and Regional Studies/Carleton College. Retrieved 2019-11-20.
  4. ^ Davis, Ruth Frances (1906). "Greetings from Japan". Report of the ... Biennial Convention and Minutes of the Executive Committee Meetings of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union. White Ribbon Company. p. 110.
  5. ^ Yasutake, Rumi (2004). Transnational Women's Activism: The United States, Japan, and Japanese Immigrant Communities in California, 1859-1920. NYU Press. pp. 101–102. ISBN 978-0-8147-9703-7.
  6. ^ a b Ogawa, Manako. "American Women's Destiny, Asian Women's Dignity: Trans-Pacific Activism of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1866-1945" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hawai'i at Manoa 2004): 237-247, 287-288. Online at the University of Hawai'i Library's Scholarspace.
  7. ^ OGAWA, MANAKO (2007). "The 'White Ribbon League of Nations' Meets Japan: The Trans-Pacific Activism of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1906–1930". Diplomatic History. 31 (1): 21–50. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7709.2007.00601.x. ISSN 0145-2096. JSTOR 24916019.
  8. ^ "Woman's Missionary Meeting in Osaka". Mission Studies: Woman's Work in Foreign Lands. 30: 35. February 1912.
  9. ^ "Distinguished Visitors from Japan at National WCTU Headquarters". The Union Signal. 45: 9. April 25, 1918.
  10. ^ "World's WCTU Notes". The Union Signal. 46: 9. February 20, 1919.