num_pages: 246
description: In 1871, 11-year-old Sutematsu Oyama was sent by the Japanese government to the United States along with four other little girls to be educated in Western manners and learning. There she would spend the happiest time of her life - eleven formative years - learning to think like an American, going on to study at Vassar College and becoming class valedictorian. In the bloom of youth, well-educated, respected and loved, Sutematsu was called home by the Japanese government. Full of high hopes and noble ideas of teaching English to her sisters in her homeland, she returned to a Japan where higher education for women did not exist - where they were brought up only to become obedient wives and good mothers.Refusing to emulate her docile compatriots, Sutematsu applied her Western learning and upbringing in a unique way. She married at the age of 23 with an almost calculated rationality, spurning a handsome young lover for a position of influence and high visibility as wife of Japan's Army Minister, a man eighteen years her senior with three orphaned young daughters.While appearing to tread the traditional Japanese path of marriage and children, Sutematsu Oyama's life was far from typical. While accepting her role as a young mother and wife, she went on to dazzle the elite of international society with her polished, fluent English, poise and confidence, and Western learning. Sutematsu used her brains and social rank as a means of fund-raising for a variety of causes, and to impart Western culture to the imperial household. Unrevealed until now is the zeal with which she also worked behind the scenes to help establish the first school of English and higher learning for Japanese women, putting to work her U.S. connections and unflagging faith. Sutematsu was at the same time a devoted mother, raising six children in a bicultural home, and a spirited patriot, living through four wars, two in which her husband was commander of Japanese troops in China and Manchuria. This touching narrative, carefully researched and documented by Sutematsu's great-grand-daughter, and based on some forty letters and articles written in English by the Vassar graduate to her American host sister, brings to vivid life a pioneering woman and her time. Through these letters one shares Sutematsu's personal struggles and triumphs in a conservative Japanese society unprepared for the talents she had to offer - and ends up applauding her chosen path.
language: English
title: Unexpected Destinations: The Poignant Story of Japan's First Vassar Graduate
titlecomplete: Unexpected Destinations: The Poignant Story of Japan's First Vassar Graduate
genres: Japanese History, Biography, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 13
publisher: Kodansha America