Beyond the Blossoming Fields by Junichi Watanabe

Ogino believed that if she had been examined by a woman, her disease would have been handled with sympathy and understanding. She felt deep shame about male doctors examining her, and they treated her coldly and mechanically, with little respect for her comfort or modesty. 5 While the medicine effectively managed her disease, the emotional toll of the dehumanizing and humiliating treatment changed her. It is unclear how long she spent in the hospital, but her stay was long-at least a few months 4 and possibly as long as two years. 3įollowing her divorce, Ogino received Western medical treatment at the Juntendo Hospital in Tokyo. Ogino’s husband had given her a sexually transmitted disease, most likely gonorrhea, so she divorced him. 1,2 Not long after, the pair divorced, despite the taboo against it at the time. At age sixteen she found herself married to the son of a well-respected headman from a neighboring village, a match her family had made for her. She was the fifth daughter of a respected and wealthy family, and with that came expectations.

She was born in 1851 in what is now Japan’s Saitama prefecture.

She advocated for the rights, safety, and health of women and today should be remembered as an activist and role model to all those balancing who they want to be and who society believes they can be. She lived a life full of struggles, achieved a flash of fame, and then quietly retreated into history. Ogino Ginko was Japan’s first female doctor of Western medicine. The life of a trailblazer: Ogino Ginko, one of the first female doctors in Japan March 29, 2021

Beyond the Blossoming Fields by Junichi Watanabe