Tetsu Yasui

was a Japanese educator and writer. She was the first dean of Tokyo Woman's Christian University and its second president.

Biography

Tetsu Yasui (centre), with Rajini School students, Thailand c. 1904–1906

Yasui was born in 1870 in Tokyo. Her father was a weapons instructor to Doi Toshimoto, a daimyō of Koga Domain. She was largely raised by her devout Buddhist grandparents

In 1897, Yasui received a scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Education to attend Cambridge University to study the history of education and psychology under Elizabeth Phillips Hughes at Hughes Hall. She returned to Japan in 1900 and soon converted to Christianity. She came out of retirement briefly in 1942 to become principal of the Toyo Eiwa Jogakuin, a girls' school founded by Canadian missionaries.

Legacy Yasui was the first Japanese female college president. The feminist activist Yamakawa Kikue, who was taught by Yasui at Tokyo Women's Normal School, cited Yasui as an influence and praised her for her contributions to the women's movement in Japan.