Niijima Yae

Niijima Yae
新島八重
Born	Yamamoto Yae (山本八重) (1845-12-01)1 December 1845 Aizu, Mutsu Province, Japan
Died	14 June 1932(1932-06-14) (aged 86) Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan
Resting place	Doshisha Cemetery, Kyoto, Japan
Nationality	Japanese
Other names	Yamamoto Yaeko (山本八重子)
Occupation(s)	Nurse, former soldier
Spouses	Shonosuke Kawasaki ​ ​ (m. 1865; div. 1871)​ Joseph Hardy Neesima ​ ​ (m. 1876; died 1890)​
Children	none
Parents	Yamamoto Gonpachi (father) Yamamoto Saku (mother)
Relatives	Yamamoto Kakuma (brother)
Military career
Allegiance	Aizu Domain
Years of service	1868
Battles/wars	Battle of Aizu

Niijima Yae (新島八重), born Yamamoto Yae (山本八重) (1 December 1845 – 14 June 1932), also known as Yamamoto Yaeko (山本 八重子), was a Japanese onna-musha, educator, nurse, and scholar of the late Edo period who lived into the early Shōwa period.^[1] Her samurai family belonged to the Hoshina clan, loyal to the Tokugawa Shogunate.^[1] 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”.^[1]

Yaeko served as a nurse during the Russo-Japanese War and Sino-Japanese War,^[1] 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.^[2] 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.