September 21, 2000

Contact: Barbara Watkins, Continuing Education, (785) 864-7881

Editors note: Photo scans are available by calling University Relations, (785) 864-8858.
Hometowns are Hays and Logan.

Book chronicles Kansas missionary's 44 years in Japan

LAWRENCE - It was 1907, the dawn of the 20th century, when a young University of Kansas graduate from Logan decided to leave a teaching job in Denver and undertake "the grandest mission on earth."

Kate Hansen, daughter of a prominent Kansas pioneer family, became a missionary teacher in Japan, ultimately spending 44 years there. She witnessed two world wars, the earthquake of 1923, the Great Depression and the beginning of the Japanese women's movement.

Her diaries, writings, letters and some of her musical compositions were published this fall in a book, "The Grandest Mission on Earth: From Kansas to Japan, 1907-1951," by KU's Division of Continuing Education. The book is available in hardback for $36 and includes photographs, maps and illustrations. For more information, call continuing education, at (785) 864-5823 or toll free at (877) 404-5823.

A free public symposium, sponsored by KU and its Division of Continuing Education and Center for East Asian Studies, is planned in conjunction with the book's publication. "Crossing Boundaries: Kate Hansen and American Missionary Women in East Asia" will begin at 2:30 p.m. Nov. 10 at the Continuing Education Building, 1515 St. Andrews Drive in Lawrence. KU history professor Daniel Bays will give the keynote presentation.

Miss Hansen's nephew and his wife, Dane G. and Polly Roth Bales of Logan, and Calvin Harbin of Hays, collected and edited Miss Hansen's accounts of her years in Japan and also of an 1891 family trip to Colorado by covered wagon, of a year's stay in Denmark in 1893 and 1894, and of her years as a KU student. Many of her articles were originally written for church publications and detailed the importance and process of teaching Western music in Japanese schools and in higher education.

Following her graduation from KU in 1905, Kate Hansen traveled to Japan to serve as a missionary teacher, dean and acting president at Miyagi College in Sendai, as well as a mediator between Japanese and American cultures. She retired in 1951, returning to Logan where she lived until her death in January 1968.

During retirement she was honored by KU, Miyagi College and the Emperor of Japan for her contributions to the education of Japanese women. She and Lydia Lindsey, her colleague at Miyagi College, received distinguished service citations from KU in 1955. A concert hall at Miyagi College was dedicated in her memory in 1980.

Excerpts of Miss Hansen's letter

"I think you are the only one in the whole family who will understand why I do this. I have written home all the practical things I could think of, but I do not have much hope of their having any great effect. I do believe that you understand about it; that you know it is the only honorable thing for me to do, as a volunteer, even if for no other reason - and you can imagine, I think, how much I want to do it, besides.

"It is an unusual opportunity, looking at it from every side. Just the school work I have always wanted, in the country and even in the very town (or rather city, for Sendai is second only to Tokyo) where I have always had the greatest interest. I can do work there, in a short time, that I could not do here in all my life; I can make myself count, for everything there is in me ..."