THE FIRST FEMALE CHEMIST (AND PHARMACIST?) IN JAPAN: CHIKA KURODA
Description
This paper follows a line of research started some time ago by the author with the purpose of presenting to society the biographies of women who managed to overcome the prejudices and laws in force of the time in which they lived, which prevented them from carrying out university studies, to differentiate from what happened at the same time with men. The main objective is to show the biography of Chika Kuroda, the first woman to obtain a degree in Chemistry in Japan, in the first decades of the last century and also the second woman to obtain a Ph.D. in Science in 1929 (some sources point out that she was also pharmacist, although this fact is not properly documented). The methodology used has been the search of data on this woman in bibliographical and computer sources, as well as in historic archives. As a main result, a biography of her, as complete as possible, has been constructed. Some brief biographical data on her compatriot Kono Yasui, the first Japanese woman to receive the degree of doctor in Science are also shown
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This article, framed in the studies on Science in general in Japan, has the main objective of showing the biography of Chika Kuroda, the first Japanese woman to obtain a degree in Chemistry in her country, in the first decades of the last century and also the second woman to obtain a Ph.D. in Science in 1929. Some sources point out that she was also a pharmacist, although this fact is not properly documented. In order to contextualize the situation in which Chika Kuroda, a woman, decided to start university studies in her country, Japan, at that time an empire and therefore is subject to the laws and decrees that emanated from the emperor, it is convenient to indicate, in the first place, that in Japan, the Ministry of Education was established in 1871 with a school system that followed the North American model of studies although with a centralized control system copied from France (Figure 1). The Buddhist temple schools at neighborhood associations were nationalized as primary schools. Those of feudal dominion became schools of secondary education, and the Academy of the Tokugawa shogunate became the base of the Imperial University of Tokyo (nowadays University of Tokyo). After several modifications made, the Imperial Education Decree of 1890, together with highly centralized government control in education, was the guide of Japanese education until the end of World War II. Thus, the primary school became compulsory in 1872, the secondary schools were preparatory schools for those students destined to enter one of the Imperial Universities and the Imperial Universities aimed to create westernized leaders who could be fit to lead the modernization of the country. It was the Minister of Education Inoue Kowashi who first promoted female education through an exclusive school system for girls in 1907 (Khan, 1998). It was within this educational context when Chika Kuroda was the first Japanese woman to graduate in Science. in the Chemistry section, more specifically.