 Kono Yasui was the first Japanese woman to earn a doctorate in science.
Yasui was born in 1880 in Kagawa Prefecture. She attended the Women’s Department of Kagawa Normal School, and then proceeded to the Division of Science at Women’s Higher Normal School. After graduating she taught at a girl’s school for three years. In 1905, when the government-funded research student system was newly established at Women’s Higher Normal School, she was chosen for the only science research student quota that year, majoring in zoology and botany. Her paper titled, "Weber’s organ of carp fish," was the first paper by a woman scientist published in the journal "Zoological Science." She then studied the prothallium of Salvinia natans and published her results in the "Journal of Plant Science." Her further research results were published in the Annals of Botany, a journal in the UK. This was the first time a Japanese woman’s work was published in a foreign specialized journal.
Her history as a pioneering woman scientist cannot be narrated without adding the phrase, "the first Japanese woman to," in all episodes, but it was also a thorny path in a time of harsh gender discrimination. Although she had already achieved much as an assistant professor at Women’s Higher Normal School, when she applied for a post as an international student, the Ministry of Education was reluctant to give her permission because of their belief that "a woman cannot achieve much in science." As the condition for studying abroad, she had to list "home economics research" in addition to "scientific research," and she also had to make a tacit agreement to devote her life to research without marrying.
Yasui traveled to the US in 1914 and studied new techniques on botany research under Professor Jeffrey at Harvard. She began to conduct research on Japanese coal. She continued with this research for ten years even after returning to Japan, where she was commissioned to oversee student experiments for a genetics course at Tokyo Imperial University. She collected coal from around the country herself, personally descending into deep coalmines, and repeated careful research to clarify the structural differences in carbonized plants depending on the degree of carbonization. Concurrently with her research on coal, she also conducted cytology and genetics research on plants such as morning glory and moss-rose.
The results of these studies were highly acclaimed, and her doctoral thesis published in 1927, "Studies on the structure of lignite, brown coal, and bituminous coal in Japan" (collection of nine papers, including main paper, "Botanical research on coal in Japan"), earned her a doctorate in science, the first for a woman in Japan. Thereafter, she simultaneously conducted research at Tokyo Imperial University and research on cell biology and genetics at Tokyo Women’s Higher Normal School. She also studied the fields of comparative embryology, comparative morphology, and issues regarding evolution, species development and phylogenetics. She published a total of 99 papers until 1957 (age 77).
As a teacher of Tokyo Women’s Higher Normal School, she was strict and did not treat students as "girls," and showed great concern over the education of following generations. During the post-war educational reforms, she worked actively to establish a national university for women, to contribute to the advancement of women’s education. Yasui’s life truly served as a definite guide for following generations of women scientists. Also, she donated the celebratory money received at her retirement ceremony to the school as a "Yasui-Kuroda Scholarship," which continues to encourage young researchers to this day.
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