KIM Kyungok
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Keywords: Tsuda Children’s House, Tsuda Eigaku Juku, wartime child care, rural nursery, Kodaira
This research analyses how the rural nursery known as “Tsuda Children’s House” (Tsuda Eigaku Juku), founded in Kodaira in 1939, affected its broader community of Kodaira in Tokyo during the Asia-Pacific War (1937-1945). This is the first systematic academic study of this topic, the only previous work being a narrative included in the official history of Kodaira. This research reveals how the role of the nursery changed in the circumstances of the war.
Historical method was used to examine the “Bulletin” issued by the alumnas’ association of the Tsuda Eigaku Juku, the essay “My Way” by Hujita Taki, an autobiography “shoden” by Hoshino Ai, and Kodaira’s history. This research discovered that only Tsuda Children’s House in Kodaira performed both day care and education services during the war. It also found that Kodaira’s residents put implicit trust in it, which contributed to the improvement of Kodaira as a community. The nursery was also available to people of every class including farmers, and not only local people but also Koreans from colonial Korea. The reason why this was possible is that, as the war intensified, the role of the Tsuda Children’s House changed from that of a rural nursery to a wartime nursery as part of total war.