東京女学館教頭エレン・マクレー

抄録

Miss Ellen MacRae came to Japan with six other English Christian lady teachers, invited to became the principal of the Ladies' Institute in 1887, when the Japanese were most anxious to westernize themselves in their history. The Ladies' Institute was founded by Professor Toyama and Prime Minister Ito, who intended to cultivate Japanese girls in the western fashion through personal religious influence of the Christian ladies.
But in a few years the Japanese came to prefer modernization and nationalism to westernization. Miss MacRae and the other ladies were dismissed suddenly and unjustly. They indignantly went hnme in 1892.
She came back to Japan again alone and at her own expense in 1896. She devoted herself to Christian work as an ordinary missionary in Sendai, where she was also in charge of the Women's Divinity School, and often made missionary trips to neighbouring towns.
But she had to go back to England because of her elder sister's illness in 1906, and she was never to see Japan and people who loved her very much.
In England she worked as a circulating missionary for women prisoners. She died at the age of 76 in London in 1921.