The Legacy of Elizabeth Russell
Karen K. Seat
Elizabeth Russell, missionary to Japan from 1879 to 1919, lived a long and complex life that in microcosm reflected social and political transformations in both the United States and Japan, particularly as these transformations affected ideologies and practices concerning Women's roles in society.' Russell's life (October9, 1836, to September 6,1928) was shaped by important nineteenth-century women's movements, including the development of women's higher education and the women's foreign mission movement. Throughout her long life, Russell inhabited a range of identities available to women of her generation: she graduated from an all-female academy and became a school teacher as a young adult, then found herself cast as a spinster and an invalid in her thirties; she ultimately became a career missionary and the mother of an adopted daughter. She became a missionary at the age of forty-two through the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episco-pal Churcb, and she spent the following forty years of her life involved in the movement to promote higher education for Japanese women. Her most important and enduring work as a missionary was the establishment of Kwassui Gakuin in Nagasaki, an educational institution for girls and women that flourishes to this day1
Russell founded Kwassui Gakuin upon her arrival in Japan in 1879, a time when mission schools for girls and women were becoming a popular outreach strategy among missionaries, particularly as the number of unmarried missionary women was increasing through the rise of women's foreign mission societies. Russell's Kwassui Gakuin represents one of the most successful mission school endeavors of its time. While nineteenth-century mission rhetoric usually framed the purpose of female mission schools in terms of training future Christian wives and mothers, Russell radically expanded her school's curriculum to educate students for work beyond this purpose. Kwassui rose to prominence as it opened industrial departments to train women to enter developing industries, offered subjects not usually offered in other schools for girls and women (such as advanced math and science), and added increasingly higher levels of post-primary education, establishing one of the first college-level programs for women in the country. Founding a female school during a time when formal educational institutions for girls and women were a rarity in Japan, Russell was a pioneer in developing women's primary and higher education during Japan's early years as a newly forming nation-state.
Russell's work in Japan was not limited to Kwassui Gakuin. She also founded Kwassui Girl Home in response to the needs of orphaned children and established a seaman's home as part of a movement to steer the stream of sailors entering Nagasaki's port away from the temptations of "worldly pleasures during their stay in the city. When she retired in 1919, she was decorated with the Japanese emperor's blue ribbon medal in recognition of her educational and social-welfare contributions during her years in Japan.
Russell's Early Years
Elizabeth Russell was born in Cadiz, Ohio, the second of six children born toJohn andJulia Ann Russell. Her father.a millwright, moved the family several times before settling in Wheeling, Virginia (later West Virginia), in 1844, when Elizabeth was eight years old.' Although not of privileged origins, she obtained a high-level education for a woman of her day through her intelligence, ambition, and good fortune.
Attheageof nineteen, Elizabeth Russell was discovered by Sarah Foster Hanna, the principal of Washington Female Seminary, an academically advanced school of higher education for women in Washington, Pennsylvania. Hanna, serving as the substitute principal of Russell's modest school in Wheeling during the 1855-56 school year, noticed Russell's exceptional academictalent and arranged for her to become a boarding student at Washington Seminary. Elizabeth Russell's mother had died in 1855, and the young Elizabeth became quite attached to Mrs. Hanna; theboarding school community became hernewfamily. It wasat Washington Seminary that Russell developed her high ideals for women's education. She also received her first missionary impulse while at theseminary when a missionary from Egypt came to speak to the student body.'
Russell graduated from Washington Seminary in 1859 as the valedictorian of her class.t The following years were not easy. She struggled to find satisfactory living and working arrangements, while the raging Civil War divided her home state of Virginia. Moving back after graduation to her family home, where her father lived with a new wife, Russell found work as a photograph painter and also worked as governess In 1863 her only sister,Julia, married, after which Russell lived at her sister's house and became a schoolteacher. She worked as a teacher for some ten years while living with her sister's family. Then, at the age of thirty-six, she experienced a profound turn of events that changed the course of her life. That year she had, in her own words, a "complete nervous breakdown75 an experience that she recorded at length in her journal later in life. Her physician told her that she would have to give up teaching to preserve her health. Russell states in her journal that during this low point in her life, she believed she would never work again. In later years, as she looked back over her life, she marveled that it was just when she had come to expect a future of idleness and decay that she was called to the most important work of her life:a forty-year missionary career in Japan.
Elizabeth Russell at age eighty,
1916
April 2008 93
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Providence Has Freed Our Hands: Women's Missions and the American Encounter With Japan
(Women in Religion) (Women and Gender in Religion) (English Edition) Kindle Edition
by Karen K. Seat (Autor) Format: Kindle Edition
At the close of the nineteenth century, American women missionaries traveled far afield to spread Christianity across the globe. Their presence abroad played a significant role in shaping foreign perceptions of America. At the same time, the cultural knowledge and independence these women missionaries gained had a profound impact on gender roles and racial ideologies among Protestants in the United States. In “Providence Has Freed Our Hands,” Karen K. Seat tells the history of women’s foreign missions in Japan and reveals the considerable role they played in liberalizing American understandings of Christianity, gender, and race.
The author uses the story of Elizabeth Russell, a colorful missionary to Japan, as the backbone for her study. As a member of the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the most powerful women’s institutions of the late nineteenth century, Russell founded a progressive school for girls in Japan, defying the conservative ideologies not only of her own organization but also of the government of Japan. Transformed by her experience in Japan, Russell became a forceful advocate for racial tolerance and women’s access to education.
With a storyteller’s gift for narration, Seat illustrates how Russell’s own life reflected the key issues fueling women’s missions: increased access to higher education, the impact of evangelical spirituality on women’s identities, and the broadening horizons available to women, while Russell’s missionary work in turn opened up new discourses in American culture.
Syracuse University Press
Publication date
7 April 2008
Karen K. Seat is an associate professor in the Religious Studies Program at the University of Arizona. She was born and raised in Fukuoka, Japan. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
Publisher : Syracuse University Press (7 April 2008)
Language : English
File size : 1705 KB
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1879年に活⽔学院はアメリカ⼈宣教師エリザベス・ラッセル⼥史により創⽴されました。
キリスト教精神に基づき、⼈として豊かな⼼を養い、社会に必要な⼥性の育成を⽬指した建学の志は今も脈々と受け継がれています。
知識、技術と共に豊かな⼈間性を追求します。
エリザベス・ラッセル⼥史
活⽔学院の歴史
History of KWASSUI
キリスト教 精神による全⼈教育
活⽔⼥⼦⼤学における教育の最も⼤きな特徴は、「建学の精神」を⼟台とする全⼈教育にあります。
聖書によれば、⼈間には神の似姿「Imago・Dei」（イマゴ・デイ）として、かけがえのない⽣命と尊厳が与えられています（創世記1︓27）。活⽔は創⽴以来、ひとりひとりを尊重し個性を磨く教育受験⽣の⽅へ 在学⽣の⽅へ 卒業⽣の⽅へ 保護者の⽅へ 地域・⼀般の⽅へ 企業の⽅へキリスト教教育は「知恵と⽣命（いのち）との泉－主イエス・キリスト－に掬（むす）べよ」という創⽴者の願いに基づいて、「チャペルアワー」や「キリスト教学」を通して、すべての学⽣に提供されます。これらは「建学の精神」に基づく⼈⽣観・世界観を養うプログラムであると同時に、⾃分⾃⾝の⼼や⽣き⽅と対話する⼤切な機会です。また「全学修養会」・「クリスマス」などのキリスト教⾏事は、⼈⽣のよい道しるべとなることでしょう。 東⼭⼿キャンパス⼩チャペルを⾏ってきました。⽣命への深い問いかけを通して養われた⼈格と品性を宿し、時代の要請に応える専⾨的な知識や技術を⾝につけた⼥性の育成を⽬指します。
「建学の精神」を養うためのプログラム活⽔⼥⼦⼤学では、授業期間中、⽕曜⽇と⽊曜⽇に「朝の礼拝」を⾏っており、⼼洗われるひと時をもって⼀⽇を始めることができます。15分間という短い時間ですが、オルガンに導かれて讃美歌を歌い、聖書のことばに触れ、メッセージを聴きます。メッセージは、宗教センターが年に５回発⾏している「Chapelmate（チャペ
ルメイト）」にも掲載されています。
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