page_title: Kusumoto Ine
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Kusumoto Ine / Life and career / Early life
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: "Otaksa". Kusumoto Taki (1807-1865), alias Sonogi, de geliefde van Von Siebold. Op 10 mei 1827 wordt hun dochter Ine (1827-1903) geboren, die later de eerste vrouwelijke arts en verloskundige in Japan zal worden. English: "Otaksa". Kusumoto Taki (1807-1865), a.k.a. Sonogi, Von Siebold inamorata. May 10th, 1827 their daughter Ine (1827-1903) was born, who later became the first female physician and obstetrician 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: Shiimoto Ine was born on 31 May 1827 in the city of Nagasaki.  The surname Shiimoto came from a Japanese rendering of the surname of her German father, the physician Philipp Franz von Siebold, who was living on Dejima, an artificial island off Nagasaki to where foreign trade was restricted during the more than two centuries of Japan's near-total self-seclusion from the world.  There he played a role in introducing Western medical techniques to Japan.  Ine's mother was Kusumoto Taki, a courtesan sent at 16 from the Nagasaki pleasure district Maruyama in 1823 to be Siebold's concubine.
  Ine lived with her parents on Dejima until Siebold was banished on 22 October 1829 for allegedly exporting restricted information illicitly gathered from the geographer Takahashi Kageyasu.   He was accused of smuggling items including maps which it was believed could fall into the hands of Japan's enemies, such as Russia, which posed a threat on Japan's northern borders.  Taki and the two-year-old Ine were not permitted to leave Japan; they waved him goodbye from a small boat in the harbour as his ship left.  Taki soon after married a man named Wasaburō.
  The wealthy Siebold left Taki and Ine with a stockpile of valuable sugar to support themselves and arranged for his associates to watch over them.  He sent Ine books of Dutch grammar, important for Western studies at the time in Japan, and students of Siebold's contributed to her education.  An apocryphal story tells of Ine running away at age 14 or 15 to study medicine with one of them, Ninomiya Keisaku, in Uwajima Domain, where he had been placed under house arrest for his involvement in the Siebold Affair.
caption: Portrait of Ine's mother Kusumoto Taki, c. 1830s
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