Discovering Makino
Discovering Makino in the Newspapers
In May 2024, the MIT Libraries’ Instagram account published a post that not only acknowledged Makino as MIT’s first woman international student but also pointed to a historic newspaper article that prominently featured Makino. This was an article published by the Boston Globe on November 10, 1901, which was based on an interview of Makino and another Japanese woman, Akuri Inokuchi, who later became known as a pioneer of physical education in Japan. In it, we learn further details about Makino’s life, including the fact that she had converted to Christianity during her first stint as a teacher at the Episcopalian St. Margaret’s School and that she had, like Honma and Dan, studied for several years in America before arriving at MIT. We also learn that she was a fan of “American clothes,” which she found to be “so much more comfortable than our [native] costume.” We learn that her sister was also an educator and that her brother was a graduate of the Sapporo Agricultural School, which was one of the early centers of American-style higher education in Japan (led, for some time, by William S. Clark, who was also previously the president of what eventually became the University of Massachusetts Amherst).
"Knowledge for Japan" headline from the Boston Globe, November 10, 1901
In fact, this Globe article was only the earliest of several newspaper articles that Makino was featured in (oftentimes along with Inokuchi and other Japanese women) during her time in America. The Sunday, May 18, 1902 edition of The Providence Journal described her in this way: “Kiyo Makino, a brilliant young Japanese woman, is studying at the Institute of Technology, Boston, where she is making a specialty of biology. She supports herself entirely at the Institute by translating for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts its works on Japanese pottery. In some of her classes Miss Makino is the only girl member, but she does work that ranks with that of the men brought up to scientific study in the English language. Her perseverance and the cheerful way in which she has met the enormous difficulties of pursuing here her chosen branch of knowledge fill one with admiration as well as amazement.”
These contemporary news articles tell us that Makino and other Japanese women like her were not always anonymous and that they were celebrated by the local press for their intellectual endeavors. In fact, similarly laudatory articles published by the local New English press also covered Honma and Dan’s educational pursuits during the 1860s and ‘70s. And it is in this context that we can see that Makino joined the very same ranks of Japan’s first international students who studied in the United States and subsequently returned to Japan with their newly acquired knowledge as well as their experiences of living abroad.
Instructors and students at St. Margaret's School, Tokyo, c. 1896
Discovering Makino in Japan
The details regarding Kiyoko Makino that were discovered in the Distinctive Collections and New England newspapers have led to further discoveries in Makino’s home country and elsewhere. For example, the book on “Physiology of Women,” as Makino described it, has been digitized and made available online by Japan’s National Diet Library. Formally entitled Women’s Physiology and Hygiene, the1908 book lists the author as “Prof. Makino Kiyoko of the Aoyama Gakuin” and covers all aspects of women’s health and physiology in great detail. The National Diet Library’s collection also includes another article published by Makino in 1906, in which she makes comparisons between Japanese and American nannies based on her observations in Boston. A later reprint of this article that had been published by a San Francisco-based Japanese-American newspaper has been digitized by the Hoover Institution’s Hōji Shinbun Digital Collection. These publications point to Makino’s ongoing efforts to publish not only on her academic specialty but also her broader knowledge based on her experiences in America.
Research on Kiyoko Makino is still ongoing. During the summer months of 2024, the curator of this exhibit visited two schools in Tokyo where Makino taught after her return to Japan, St. Hilda’s School (Kōran Jogakkō) and St. Margaret’s School (Rikkyō Jogakuin). With the help of archivists and teachers at these schools, these visits yielded further historical sources and data regarding Makino’s life and career as an educator in women’s schools. The visit to St. Hilda’s, for example, yielded the following description of Makino’s character as a popular teacher, in a class diary written by one of her students in 1912:
“In contrast to today’s gloomy weather, our classroom was the only one at school that was filled with energetic voices, thanks to the fact that our lesson was taught by Miss Makino, famed for being the most cheerful teacher at our school. We forgot our dreariness as if we drank tonic and studied about the residents of Germany and its chorography.”
The visit to St. Margaret’s School yielded further key details regarding Makino’s life, such as the location of her likely hometown in Wakayama prefecture, where she retired before she passed away sometime around 1933. Among the historical documents discovered at St. Margaret’s was also a photograph of Makino that was taken just a few years before she left for the United States. In it, we can see Makino surrounded by her students and fellow teachers in a group photo taken at the school’s campus in the Tsukiji district of Tokyo.