Yei Theodora Ozaki

Ozaki was born in London 1871,[2] to Baron Saburō Ozaki, one of the first Japanese men to study in the West, and her English mother, Bathia Catherine Morrison (1843-1936), daughter of William Mason Morrison (1819-1885) and Mary Anne Morrison, being one of her fathers' tutors in London, who married in England in 1869. Bathia; according to Mary Fraser, in the extract "A Biographical Sketch", from Warriors of old Japan, and other stories; lived separately from Ozaki in 1873. Bathia giving birth to two younger sisters, Masako Maude Mary Harriett Ozaki (b., Jan. 1872) and Kimie Bathia Alexandra Ozaki (b., Oct. 1873), until all three became teenagers.[3] Indeed Baron Ozaki returned to Japan to fulfill an arranged marriage to a Japanese noblewoman (Toda Yae) to retain the upper class family name of Toda in 1873, eventually returning to a post in St.Petersburg to attempt to reconciliate with Bathia whom was entered into the Family registry (Koseki) in 1880, until further issues arose and Bathia returned from Russia in December 1880. They eventually divorced in London, perhaps as Ozaki had fathered multiple children, 1 with Toda Yae and 7 (later totalling 14) with his Japanese mistress Fujiki Michi which into such a situation "her english friends could hardly advise her [to] go [into]."

After the divorce of their parents in 1881 on the suggestion of a friend of Baron Ozaki, all three grew up with Bathia retaining custody and living with their English grandparents in St Alban's Cottage, Fulham, London. Her grandfather William, is said to have encouraged her to write in English, which became with Japanese for Yei a mother-tongue. After a spate of having not upkept alimony expenses for his daughters, Yei and Kimie travelled to Tokyo to live with her father, in May 1887 with the consent of her mother. Masako stayed in England marrying an Englishman in 1906, whilst Kimie settled later in Norway.[4]

Fraser notes that the time Yei was sent to live in Japan with her father, where she received an education which she found enjoyable. However her father expected her to conform to Japanese societal moral values, providing her to be fully Japanese and also to marry her accordingly. However, Yei would refuse an arranged marriage, left her father's house, and became an English tutor and secretary to earn money. To earn a living, she taught English in Japan. Eventually she made the acquaintance of Fraser, the wife of the British diplomat Hugh Fraser, and in 1891 Yei became a secretary at the British Legation. After the death of Hugh Fraser in 1894, she accompanied Mary Fraser on her travels to Europe, particularly to Italy. Yei returned to Japan in 1899, where Fukuzawa Yukichi arranged for a post as a teacher for at Keiō gijuku, where she lived in a Buddhist temple.

Whilst travelling in Italy, Mary's brother Francis M. Crawford, had become aware of Yei's talent for writing and telling stories. Yei, encouraged by the success of a popular Japanese fairy tale series like those of Hasegawa Takejirō, began to write down smaller stories and to translate Japanese fairy tales. Some of these were accepted for publication by English magazines, including The Wide World Magazine, The Girl's Realm of London, and its sister magazine, The Lady's Realm between 1900 to 1902. Her first major work, The Japanese Fairy Book (1903-1908) were published in October 1903, reprinted in 1904, 1906 & 1908, published in London by Kelly & Walsh. As a collection of Japanese fairy tales were not translated from formal Japanese language, but were reworded by her in everyday language for children, ensuring their popularity in Anglophone countries. In 1908 Kelly & Walsh published Buddha's Crystal and Other Fairy Stories, followed in 1909 by Warriors of Old Japan and Other Stories at Constable in London with an introduction by John Harington Gubbins. Romances of Old Japan, was published in 1919 simultaneously in London and New York.

Beginning when she began her writing career, having frequently traveled back and forth between Japan and Europe via North America as her employment and family duties took her, her letters were frequently misdelivered to the unrelated Japanese politician and mayor of Tokyo, Yukio Ozaki, and his to her due to having the same surname. In 1905, they finally met in Tokyo, and soon married, having 3 children, Kiyoka, Shinaye and Sōma Yukika (the first Japanese woman who qualified as a simultaneous translator and noted humanitarian) between 1906 and 1912. Yei suffered a shoulder injury in the early 1930's when travelling to England from Japan to visit her close family in London. However Japanese doctors had misdiagnosed her case as an accidental fall. In the US, she was instead diagnosed with and treated for Sarcoma which allowed to travel again. She would die in London in 1932, and had her remains returned to Japan in 1932.[5]

• Japanese Fairy Tales (1908), aka The Japanese Fairy Book (1903)[6]'
• Warriors of Old Japan, and Other Stories
• Romances of Old Japan
• Buddha's Crystal and Other Fairy Stories

• Works by Yei Theodora Ozaki at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Yei Theodora Ozaki at Internet Archive
• Works by Yei Theodora Ozaki at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works by Yei Theodora Ozaki at Ball State University Digital Media Repository
• Original scans of Japanese Fairy Tales