Tsune Watanabe
{{Short description|Japanese educator}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Tsune Watanabe
| image = TsuneWatanabe1918.jpg
| alt =
| caption =
| birth_name =
| birth_date =
| birth_place = Kobe
| death_date =
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| nationality = Japanese
| other_names = Watanabe Tsune, Tsuneko Watanabe, Watanabe Tsuneko
| occupation = Church leader, educator, and temperance activist
| years_active = 1910s, 1920s
| known_for = President of the Congregational Woman's Missionary Society of Japan; active internationally with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
| notable_works =
}}
Tsune Watanabe was a Japanese educator. She was president of the Congregational Woman's Missionary Society of Japan and head of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Kobe.
Early life
File:Mrs._Tsuneko_Watanabe_LOC_23546372123.jpg
Watanabe graduated from Kobe Girls' School in 1882, in the school's first graduating class;{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KNOSAgAAQBAJ&dq=Tsune%20Watanabe%20mission&pg=PA104|title=American Women Missionaries at Kobe College, 1873-1909|last=Ishii|first=Noriko Kawamura|date=2004|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781135936204|pages=104}} her teachers were American women from Carleton College. She graduated from Carleton College in 1891,[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924057466819&view=1up&seq=168 "Miss Watanabe in America"] Life and Light for Woman (April 1918): 148. the school's first non-Western graduate.{{Cite web|url=https://apps.carleton.edu/cgrs/globalpast/beginnings/?image_id=1669082|title=Tsune Watanabe|website=Center for Global and Regional Studies/Carleton College|language=en-US|access-date=2019-11-20}}
Career
Watanabe was president of the Congregational Woman's Missionary Society of Japan and head of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Kobe. She taught at Kobe College for ten years. In 1911 she visited Korea with American missionary Ruth Frances Davis, and organized a chapter of the Japanese WCTU in Seoul.{{Cite book|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZO2-AAAAIAAJ&dq=Tsune+Watanabe+WCTU&pg=RA2-PA110|title=Report of the ... Biennial Convention and Minutes of the Executive Committee Meetings of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union|last=Davis|first=Ruth Frances|date=1906|publisher=White Ribbon Company|pages=110|language=en|chapter=Greetings from Japan}}{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EV0Cev5x8EMC&dq=Watanabe%20WCTU&pg=PA101|title=Transnational Women's Activism: The United States, Japan, and Japanese Immigrant Communities in California, 1859-1920|last=Yasutake|first=Rumi|date=2004|publisher=NYU Press|isbn=978-0-8147-9703-7|pages=101–102}} The two women went to Taiwan in 1912 to organize Japanese WCTU chapters in Taipei and Tainan.Ogawa, Manako. "American Women's Destiny, Asian Women's Dignity: Trans-Pacific Activism of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1866-1945" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hawai'i at Manoa 2004): 237-247, 287-288. Online at the University of Hawai'i Library's [https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu Scholarspace].{{Cite journal|last=OGAWA|first=MANAKO|date=2007|title=The 'White Ribbon League of Nations' Meets Japan: The Trans-Pacific Activism of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1906–1930|journal=Diplomatic History|volume=31|issue=1|pages=21–50|doi=10.1111/j.1467-7709.2007.00601.x|jstor=24916019|issn=0145-2096}}
In 1912 she convened the fifth annual meeting of the Woman's Missionary Society at Osaka.{{Cite journal|date=February 1912|title=Woman's Missionary Meeting in Osaka|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=568PAAAAIAAJ&dq=Tsune%20Watanabe%20mission&pg=RA2-PA35|journal=Mission Studies: Woman's Work in Foreign Lands|volume=30|pages=35}} In 1917 and 1918 she traveled to New York and Washington, D.C., for the convention of the WCTU.{{Cite journal|date=April 25, 1918|title=Distinguished Visitors from Japan at National WCTU Headquarters|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pkQ2AQAAMAAJ&dq=Tsune%20Watanabe%20WCTU&pg=PA123|journal=The Union Signal|volume=45|pages=9}} Although she was not ordained as a minister, she spent the winter of 1918-1919 in Santa Barbara, California, leading the small Japanese Congregational church in that city.{{Cite journal|date=February 20, 1919|title=World's WCTU Notes|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pkQ2AQAAMAAJ&dq=Tsune%20Watanabe%20WCTU&pg=RA3-PA22|journal=The Union Signal|volume=46|pages=9}} In 1923 she went to Shanghai to start a chapter of the Japanese WCTU.
References
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Category:Japanese temperance activists
Category:Carleton College alumni
Category:20th-century Japanese women educators