Hideko Inoue

Career

In 1908, when she returned from the United States, Inoue worked as a professor at the Japan Women's University and helped establish, along with Jinzo Naruse, the field of home economics in Japan. In 1911 she became the head of the Japan Women's Peace Association, an affiliate of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. In 1913, through her involvement with the alumni association, Inoue proposed that the graduates hold fundraisers to support a day care system modeled on those she had seen in the United States. The association held music performances and sold items at a bazaar to pay for the operation of the first day care center in Japan, which opened that year in the Sugamo neighborhood of Tokyo. She also founded the Women's Association for the Cultivation of International Friendship to urge women's cooperation globally.

By the 1920s, Inoue was the leading woman in the internationalist movement and was a visible supporter of world peace. As the head of the Japanese Women's Peace League, she attended the Women's World Conference on Arms Limitation, in Washington, D. C. in 1921. She was by that time, head of the home economics department, and traveled to the conference with her secretary, Dr. Marian Irwin, graduate of Bryn Mawr College. At the conference, she spoke on the need for women's education and political rights, as well as for arms control and international peace policies. She believed that if Japan agreed with disarmament policies that would make Japanese immigration more attractive in the United States and lessen the overcrowding at home. She was also the lead delegate to the 1928 Pan-Pacific Women's Conference. In 1931, she became the first woman president of the Japan Women's University and in 1933 helped organize the International Women's and Children Exposition.

In the interwar period Inoue and her husband both supported internationalism, but at the dawn of World War II, they both supported Japan's expansionism and a Pan-Asian focus under Japanese leadership. After the Second Sino-Japanese War, Inoue shifted towards pro-Asian policies and in 1937, when touring Nazi Germany, was a vocal supporter of the Nazi's Strength Through Joy program. That same year, when touring the United States she was struck by the hypocrisy of immigration bans because there was a surplus of undeveloped land. When she returned from abroad, she worked in the Ministry of Greater East Asia on educational reforms. Her lectures of the time showed she had not completely abandoned internationalism, as she argued that rationing foreign edibles which had become staples of the culture would be problematic. She also continued to press for reforms for women's education, believing that even within the cultural context of women's subservience, education was needed to advance societal modernization.

In 1939, Inoue, along with other leading women like Kiuchi Kyo and Yoshioka Yayoi, established the women’s wing of the National Language Association, an organization designed to improve and preserve the Japanese language. The goal of the women's wing was to promote the use of feminine language to embody their gender in their courteous demeanor and speech. In 1940, Inoue was one of four women appointed to serve in the National Spiritual Mobilization Movement. She was decorated by the Emperor of Japan and held many varied government posts until the war ended.

In 1946, Inoue was purged by the U. S. Occupation Administration from her presidency at the Japan Women's University. Ostensibly, her removal was based on an affiliation with the Imperial Rule Assistance Association because in 1941 she was appointed as the vice president of the Dai Nippon Seishonen-dan, (Greater Japan Youth and Child Group). This group was made of up school administrators for the purpose of creating activities for youth participation in the war effort. They organized such events as aid to soldiers' families, crop harvests, savings drives, and training for home and national defense. Inoue's defense of her actions was that she had opposed both her appointment to the Youth and Child Group and its affiliation with the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, but she became one of the few women purged in the period of occupation.

In 1954, she accompanied Dr. Hiro Ohashi on a study tour of the social services and home economics departments of Indiana University, Iowa State College, Michigan State University, and the University of Chicago, among others. They took ideas regarding integrating physical sciences into the home economics courses, updating appliances, and adding audio-visual materials home to add to the curricula of the Women's University.

Death and legacy

Inoue died on 19 July 1963. There is a carved bust of Inoue on display at the Funagi Elementary School in Tanba.