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Inokuchi Akuri

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Inokuchi Akuri
Inokuchi Akuri, from a photograph taken before 1912.
BornJanuary 12, 1871
Akita
DiedMarch 26, 1931
Other namesInoguchi Aguri, Fujita Akuri, Akuri Inokuchi
OccupationPhysical educator

Inokuchi Akuri (井口阿くり) (January 12, 1871 – March 26, 1931) was a Japanese physical educator.

Early life

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Inokuchi Akuri was born in Akita Prefecture. Sponsored by the Japanese government,[1] she attended Smith College and Wellesley College,[2] and studied physical education with Senda Berenson[3][4] at the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics, founded by Mary Tileston Hemenway.[5] "There is a great desire to make women strong in Japan," she explained to a Boston newspaper in 1901, "and so my government sent me over here to study how to increase our women's strength."[6]

Career

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Sport clothes designed by Inokuchi Akuri 01

Inokuchi was a teacher in Tokyo before her time in the United States.[7] On her return to Japan in 1903, Inokuchi taught physical education at Girls' High School in Tokyo,[8][9] and introduced a women's exercise costume of bloomers and middy blouses and calf-length skirts, for comfortable vigorous movement.[10][11][12] She published a report, Taiiku no riron oyobi jissai (Theory and Practice of Physical Education) in 1906.[4] She is considered one of the pioneers of women's modern physical education in Japan.[13]

Inokuchi also taught in the imperial household for a time, and was head of a girls' school in Taipei.[14]

Personal life

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Inokuchi married in 1911, and was known as Fujita Akuri.[15] The couple spent a brief time living in San Francisco, and in the 1920s she traveled to London as a tutor. She died in 1931, aged 60 years.

References

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  1. ^ "Athletics for Jap Girls; the Mission of Akuri Inokuchi, Who is Spending a Season in Japan". The Kansas City Star. 1902-04-06. p. 12. Retrieved 2020-10-05 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. ^ "Aguri Inokuchi (1902)". Wellesley College. Retrieved 2020-10-05.
  3. ^ Willms, Nicole (2017). "'Women Who Took Sports Beyond Play': How Japanese American Women's Basketball Went to College". In Messner, Michael; Hartmann, Douglas (eds.). When Women Rule the Court: Gender, Race, and Japanese American Basketball. Rutgers University Press. p. 107. ISBN 978-0-8135-8416-4. JSTOR j.ctt1q1cqp2.
  4. ^ a b Coates, Jennifer; Fraser, Lucy; Mark, Pendleton (2019-11-15). The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-71678-9.
  5. ^ "This Japanese Girl Was Taught in Boston". The Boston Globe. 1906-08-19. p. 46. Retrieved 2020-10-05 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. ^ "Knowledge for Japan". The Boston Globe. 1901-11-10. p. 48. Retrieved 2020-10-05 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ^ Mortimer, Alice W. (1902-11-22). "The New Women of Japan". The Bangor Daily News. p. 8. Retrieved 2020-10-05 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ^ Kasuga, Yoshimi; Tomozoe, Hidenori (2019). "Historical Research on the Promotion of Women's Physical Education in Prewar Japan: With a Focus on the Taisho Era*". International Journal of Sport and Health Science. 17: 32–44. doi:10.5432/ijshs.201812. ISSN 1348-1509.
  9. ^ Ikeda, Keiko (2010-03-01). "Ryōsai-kembo, Liberal Education and Maternal Feminism under Fascism: Women and Sport in Modern Japan". The International Journal of the History of Sport. 27 (3): 537–552. doi:10.1080/09523360903556840. ISSN 0952-3367. S2CID 144790795.
  10. ^ "Unodokai (Sports Day), c. 1930", Old Tokyo.
  11. ^ Guttmann, Allen; Thompson, Lee (2001). Japanese Sports: A History. University of Hawai'i Press. p. 93. ISBN 978-0-8248-2414-3. JSTOR j.ctt6wqsmj.
  12. ^ Cambridge, Nicolas (2011). "Cherry-Picking Sartorial Identities in Cherry-Blossom Land: Uniforms and Uniformity in Japan". Journal of Design History. 24 (2): 104–105. doi:10.1093/jdh/epr005. ISSN 0952-4649. JSTOR 23020370.
  13. ^ Kietlinski, Robin. Japanese Women and Sport: Beyond Baseball and Sumo (Bloomsbury Academic 2011): 132-133.
  14. ^ Chin, Hsiang Pin (2012-04-01). "Foot binding and physical education: the development of female physical education in Taiwan schools during the early years of Japanese rule (1895–1915)". Asia Pacific Journal of Sport and Social Science. 1 (1): 37–47. doi:10.1080/21640629.2012.681861. ISSN 2164-0599.
  15. ^ Wellesley College (1919). Bulletin. p. 31.
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