http://www.city.hino.tokyo.jp/shinsenr/
there is an animation at this website which shows Shinsengumi
relics---really neat!
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[Tokio update]
We still don't have her start or end dates for the school but we have
a very solid chronology and details from foreigners who worked there
or were close friends to staff members. Again, I can only read English
so this research was difficult but rewarding...
http://www.shinsengumihq.com/TakagiTokioinfo.htm
please do an "edit find" in the body of the page (not the top
navigation bar) for all references to "Emma" and the new information
will appear in the chronology for the years 1887-9 {look for the info
on a green background}. Her letters contain a description of her
workplace---which was Tokio's world. So if Tokio worked at the school
during those years or even AFTERWARDS--she had in fact several foreign
co-workers.
Did this American interact with other Japanese? Yes, the handful of
Japanese women who could speak English and missionaries such as Tsuda
Ume. Often her Japanese friends would visit her at her home which was
right on campus.
What can we learn from Emma's words or other description available
throught out the page (yes I know about the typos and how huge the
page has become--I didn't expect all this info ^_^)...you can learn
alot like:
the work schedule---Emma was up and writing letters at 6:30 am
I know that Tokio's cousin, the director Takamine Hideo, worked from
6am-8pm where does that leave our dorm mother? Well she had to be
sure her young students were out of bed and off to class---so Tokio
was BUSY! (^_^)
You can truly imagine the atmosphere of the school--note the beautiful
surroundings, you can see Mt. Fuji from the campus, the trees near the
Confucian temple grounds. The school however did move in the late
1890s under the director's last term to even more spacious
surroundings to accomodate the increase in students.
What do we want? We want Emma to tell us about the dorm mothers
ofcourse. I spent some time going over the microfilm (which focused
on her son's bio) and illegible handwriting (some brave researcher did
type a few of her letters) and could not find this detail. What we do
have reveals a woman who loves detail and LOVED to talk about her job.
[However] more biographical can be found in papers not microfilmed and
therefore not available --- you have to go to Cornell's special
collections and look for a box of notes by Mr. Herbert Croly who did
research Emma's time in Japan! Croly must have interviewed Emma's
friends as well because he had details not mentioned in the letters I
read. Emma's friends were teachers so she listed textbooks she used
at Tokio's school, and refers to the director by his first name
"Hideyoshi" (with a 'y') throughout. Who know maybe Takamine Hideo
introduced his cousin Tokio to this American woman. Ofcourse from
reading the Meiji era novel about a fictional teacher Botchan by
Natsume Soseki formal introductions were unavoidable....