page_title: Kusumoto Ine
section_title: Education and early career
hierarchical_section_title: Kusumoto Ine / Life and career / Education and early career
caption_attribution_description: English: Date Munenari, daimyo of Uwajima Domain in Japan
context_page_description: Kusumoto Ine was a Japanese physician. She was the daughter of Kusumoto Taki, who was a courtesan from Nagasaki; and the German physician Philipp Franz von Siebold, who worked on Dejima, an island foreigners were restricted to during Japan's long period of seclusion from the world. Ine was also known as O-Ine and later in life took the name Itoku. In Japanese she is often called Oranda O-Ine for her association with Dejima and its Dutch-language Western learning. She was the first female doctor of Western medicine in Japan.
  Siebold was banished from Japan in 1829 but managed to provide for Ine and her mother and arranged for his students and associates to care for them. Ine's reputation grew after she became a doctor of Western medicine, and she won the patronage of the feudal lord Date Munenari. She studied in various parts of Japan under numerous teachers, one of whom impregnated her—likely having raped her—resulting in her only daughter; she never married. She settled in Tokyo after the country ended its seclusion, and assisted in the birth by one of Emperor Meiji's concubines in 1873. Since her death Ine has been the subject of novels, plays, comics, and musicals in Japan.
context_section_description: Ine's medical training got an official start in 1845 when she began studying obstetrics in Okayama Domain under another of Siebold's students, Ishii Sōken,  through the introduction of Ninomiya Keisaku.  She cut her studies with Sōken short when in 1851 he impregnated her.  She returned to Nagasaki, where she gave birth in 1852 to a daughter, whom she named Tada, meaning "free", symbolizing that heaven had granted her this child "for free".  Her account of her mother's life is amongst those that assert Ine's pregnancy resulted from Sōken having raped her, though hard evidence is lacking. Ine was to rebuff Sōken's attempts to become involved in Tada's life.
  Ine continued her studies in Nagasaki under Abe Roan.  In 1854 she left Tada with her mother and went with Ninomiya Keisaku's nephew Mise Shūzō to study under Keisaku in Uwajima, whose lord, the daimyō Date Munenari, enthusiastically promoted Western learning. After he suffered a stroke in 1856, Keisaku returned to Nagasaki with Ine and Shūzō.
  Japan's seclusion came to an end in 1854 and in 1859 Nagasaki was opened as a treaty port and the Dutch abandoned Dejima for a consulate in the capital city Edo (modern Tokyo).  Siebold received a pardon and returned to Nagasaki 4 August that year with his 13-year-old son Alexander, from his German marriage.  Shūzō became Siebold's student, translator, and personal assistant, and Alexander's Japanese teacher.  Ine lived at first in her father's house, but the relationship was strained, in part over her command of Dutch, and in part over Siebold's impregnating a maid; Ine soon moved out.  She worked closely with Shūzō, who assisted her communications with his advanced Dutch ability.  Her father's reputation helped her gain patients of her own. In April 1862 Siebold was made to return to Europe again and never returned to Japan.
  Ine continued to learn from Dutch physicians in the Nagasaki community such as J. L. C. Pompe van Meerdervoort, who lauded her skills in print.  Van Meerdervoort founded in 1861 the first Western-style hospital and medical school in Japan, the Nagasaki Yōjōsho, with the support of the military government, and Ine attended classes in the women's ward and assisted in operations there.  She was the first woman in Japan to witness the dissection of a human corpse, carried out by Van Meerdervoort.
  Her reputation and connections in the Western-learning community won Ine the patronage of Date Munenari, whose favour extended to her daughter, now named Takako.  As her mixed German–Japanese blood could lead her to suffer discrimination, Munenari had her change her name to Kusumoto Itoku.  He extended a modest official rice stipend to Ine, and she was expected to be ready to serve in the women's quarters at the castle; she was one of three doctors present when Munenari's wife Yoshiko gave birth in 1867.  Ine had a busy practice in Uwajima and made frequent travel between Nagasaki and Uwajima during the 1860s.  Munenari made effort on behalf of her father and Shūzō, who were arrested in 1861 in Edo by anti-foreign factions.  Shūzō was released in 1865 and returned to Uwajima, where in 1866 he married Takako.
  Ine's mother died in 1869.  About this time Ine studied obstetrics in Nagasaki with Antonius Bauduin, who pioneered ovariotomy there and was appointed to the Tōkō national medical school in Tokyo, which had just been renamed from Edo and where the Emperor had moved after his restoration.  After other moves Ine also settled in Tokyo.  There she became acquainted with Takako's half-brother Ishii Kendō, the son of Ishii Sōken.  Ine maintained contact in Tokyo with her half-brother Alexander, who worked for the British legation, and another half-brother Heinrich, who had worked there as an interpreter for the Austro-Hungarian legation since 1869.
caption: The feudal lord Date Munenari was a patron of Ine's and of Western learning.
exif: {}