Niijima Yae

Niijima Yae (新島八重, née Yamamoto (山本); 1 December 1845 – 14 June 1932), also known as Yamamoto Yaeko (山本 八重子), was a Japanese educator, nurse, and scholar during the Bakumatsu and Meiji era. Her samurai family belonged to the Hoshina clan, loyal to the Tokugawa Shogunate. Skilled in gunnery, she helped defend the Aizu Domain during the Boshin War, earning her the nicknames “Nightingale of Japan” and “Bakumatsu Joan of Arc”.

Yaeko served as a nurse during the Russo-Japanese War and Sino-Japanese War, and became the first woman outside of Imperial House of Japan after the Meiji Restoration (originated in 1870s) to be decorated for her service to the country. She was famously known as the wife of Joseph Hardy Neesima, the founder of Doshisha English School in 1875, and with a help of American missionary Alice J. Starkweather, they co-founded the Doshisha Girls’ School a year later.