Shina Inoue Kan

Shina Inoue Kan (Japanese: 菅 支那, Kan Shina, July 25, 1899 – October 7, 1982), also seen as Shina Inouye, Shina Kan, and Shinako Kan, was a Japanese college professor.

Shina Inoue as a student, from a 1921 publication.

Early life

Shina Inoue was born on 25 July 1899 in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan.[1] In 1921, her mother Hideko Inoue attended the Conference on Limitation of Armament in Washington D.C., representing the women's peace movement in Japan, with Yajima Kajiko and plant scientist Marian Irwin Osterhout. In 1931, Hide Inoue became the first woman president of Japan Women's University.[2][3][4]

Shina Inoue graduated from Japan Women's University in 1921, and spent a year at the Punahou School in Hawaii on the Friend Peace Scholarship.[5] She earned a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1927, with a philosophy dissertation titled "Leibniz and Fichte on the Nature of Will".[6] After World War II, she completed further coursework in social welfare at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary.[7]

Career

Shina Inoue Kan followed her mother into academia and peace work. She was a professor at Japan Women's University beginning in 1928, and a member of the executive board of the Japan Women's Peace Association. She was also active at the national level in the YWCA in Japan from 1933 to 1939, and in the Yale Club of Tokyo.[8]

She reported on progress in Japanese women's rights in 1950 for the Institute of Pacific Relations, noting with encouragement the rates of female participation, as both voters and candidates, in the first elections after the war, and the establishment of a Women's Bureau in the Ministry of Labor, among other advances. "Thus, in many fields the women of Japan are being gradually freed from disabilities inherited from the feudal past," she concluded, "and are striving to attain a position of equality in political, economic, and social life."[9]

Shina Kan represented the Japan Association of University Women at the Pan-Pacific Women's Conference at Honolulu in 1949,[10] and in Manila, in 1955.[11] In the 1950s she was dean of the Department of Social Welfare at Japan Women's University, and on the executive board of the International Association of Schools of Social Work.[12] She was vice-president of the Japan section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom from 1957 to 1961, and the league's president in 1963. Kan retired from the university in 1968.[13]

Personal life

Before 1927, Shina Inoue married Christian theologian, professor and translator William Enkichi Kan (1895-1972).[14] She died on 7 October 1982.[1]

References
  1. "菅 支那 (かんしな)". Kotobank.jp (in Japanese). Tokyo, Japan: Asahi Shimbun Co., Ltd. 2019. Archived from the original on 14 November 2019. Retrieved 14 November 2019.
  2. Laura Puffer Morgan, "On the Outskirts of the Conference" The Smith Alumnae Quarterly (February 1922): 115.
  3. Rumi Washi, "'Japanese Female Speech' and Language Policy in the World War II Era" in Shigeko Okamoto, Janet S. Shibamoto Smith, eds., Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology: Cultural Models and Real People (Oxford University Press 2004): 82. ISBN 9780195347296
  4. Successive Presidents, History, Japan Women's University website.
  5. Untitled brief news item, The Friend (August 1922): 175.
  6. Doctors of Philosophy of Yale University: With the Titles of Their Dissertations, 1861-1927 (Yale University 1927): 150.
  7. "Visitor from Japan Finds Old Friends Here" North Adams Transcript (May 8, 1950): 30. via Newspapers.com
  8. Civil Affairs Handbook, Japan. Prefectural Studies, Volume 4 (War Department, September 1945): 590.
  9. Shina Kan, "Japanese Women Move Forward" Far Eastern Survey 19(12)(June 14, 1950): 122-124.
  10. "Mrs. Shina Kan to be Honored" Honolulu Advertiser (August 14, 1949): 13. via Newspapers.com
  11. "Pan Pacific Conference Discusses Education" Sydney Morning Herald (March 3, 1955): 31. via Newspapers.com
  12. Shina Kan, "Commentary On the Group Discussions On Preparation of Senior Personnel and Auxiliary Personnel" International Social Work 2(2)(April 1959): 30-32.
  13. Gwenfread Elaine Allen, Bridge Builders: The Story of Theodore and Mary Atherton Richards (Hawaii Conference Foundation 1970): 153-154.
  14. Yasuo Furuya, ed., A History of Japanese Theology (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997): 69. ISBN 9780802841087
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