Dear Friends and students of GTO
I found this picture while visiting my mentor, Father Dominic Tagawa,S.M.(Head of Gyosei International School). He gave me a permission to bring it home and copied it. I was excited to see so many foreign faces. The whole football(soccer) team was completely foreign students.
We easily forget history. Japan until Sino-Japanese war was a minor state in Asia and working hard to modernize and catch up to survive the imperialistic colonialism that was expanding all the way to Far East.
To modernize they desperately accepted the new educational system of the west. They invited anyone that can help them and most often they were the missionaries.
One of the early Catholics came to Japan and help establish schools were the Society of Mary, before the Jesuits came to Japan in Meiji. Remember Sophia University, a Jesuit university is celebrating their centennial this year. They started the school called the Morning Star in Tsukiji in 1888. Tsukiji was the settlement in Tokyo opened as promised by Tokugawa shogunate to the major western powers and Meiji government had to accept the promise made by the former regime. They later moved to Kudan and made a dormitory to accommodate the needs of foreigners' children mostly coming from a large residential settlement of Yokohama.
I heard from a priest in Gyosei about 30 years ago studying the history of the school that any students speaking Japanese among the dorm students would not be permitted to return to their home in Yokohama.
We always had that rule even in my days and I did not like it.
Dear students can you recall some rules of your school and how you felt upon it.
gto
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