"Hull-House" in Downtown Tokyo: The Transplantation of a Settlement House from the United States into Japan and the North American Missionary Women, 1919-1945

The Kōbōkan settlement house was created in 1919 in downtown Tokyo by the North American missionary members of the Japanese Women's Christian Temperance Union in order to cope with the negative by-products of rapid modernization in Japan. This essay reveals how the missionary women transplanted a settlement house from the United States into Japan by transforming its ideologies and practices so they would be acceptable not only to working-class Japanese but also to authorities who functioned as the backbone of Japanese imperialism. This essay also examines how the missionary women enabled the settlement house to survive during the tumultuous years of the Pacific War.