Biographical Directory

Isoo Abe (1865-1949), a Christian pastor, Socialist labor leader and the Professor of Political Economy at Waseda University, was an early supporter of birth control in Japan ("Isoo Abe, 84, Took Baseball to Japan," New York Times, 11 February 1949; Hopper, A New Woman of Japan, pp. 25 and 37).

Chuichi Ariyoshi (1873-1947) was a civil servant and lawyer, who was the Governor of Hyogo from April 1919 to June 1922. He later served as Mayor of Yokohama (1925-31), and was appointed to the House of Peers. ("Rotary Personalities," The Rotarian 55:6 [Dec. 1939]:45.)

Takeji Ayakawa (1891-1966), a nationalist political theorist, helped found the Yuzonsha, a pan-Asian organization that saw history as a struggle between different racial groups. Ayakawa argued that American foreign and racial policies contradicted its democratic principles, publishing Jinshu mondai kenkyu (Study of the Race Question) in 1925 and other studies. (Sharon Minichiello, Japan's Competing Modernites: Issues in Culture and Democracy, 1900-1930 [Honolulu, 1930], 198; Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman, Pan Asianism: A Documentary History, Vol. 2: 1920-Present [Lanham, Md., 2011], 56-58.)

Annie Wood Besant (1847-1933), British social reformer, woman's rights activist, spirited advocate of Irish and Indian home rule, and a prominent Theosophist. After meeting free thinker Charles Bradlaugh and helping to found the Freethought Publishing Company, Besant and Bradlaugh decided to test Britain's obscenity law by reissuing Charles Knowlton's The Fruits of Philosophy (1877), a treatise advocating contraception, but both were eventually exonerated. In 1878 Besant published her own booklet, The Law of Population, which was notable for its up-to-date data on contraceptives, including pessaries, the Indian rubber cervical cap, and such spermicides as quinine (Vern L. Bullogh, ed., The Encyclopedia of Birth Control [Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 2001], pp. 29-30).

Zelma Corning Brandt (1891-1990) was a publicist and literary agent with the firm of Brandt & Kirkpatrick, which had represented Sanger since 1921 (Social Security Death Index; Brandt & Kirkpatrick to Margaret Sanger, 22 August 1921, Reel 135, frame 88, Papers of Margaret Sanger, 1900-1966, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.).

George Gordon Noel Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824), noted poet and symbol of 19th century Romanticism, and honored for his commitment to liberty and independence, was also known for his unorthodox, often scandalous private life (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography accessed November 10, 2009.)

Harold Hannyngton Child (1869-1945), a British writer, poet, and drama critic. Though Child, a widower since 1918, became Janet de Selincourt's live-in lover during the 1920s, the de Selincourts' open marriage enabled him to live with them (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography accessed November 10, 2009; Esther Katz, ed. Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Vol. 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928, [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003], p. 282, note 3.)

Winston Churchill (1874-1965), a prominent British politician, was the Secretary of State for the Colonies, a Cabinet post. During World War I he held a number of military appointments, including Secretary of State for War. Churchill was a member of the British delegation to the Washington Naval Conference (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography accessed November 10, 2009.)

Elizabeth R. Coleman (1875-1932), along with her husband Horace, was a Quaker missionary in Tokyo. The couple left Japan for England in September 1923, but returned to Japan often. In 1930, they settled in Chicago, but two years later, after their twenty-two year old son, Horace, was accused of improper conduct with one of the poor girls they sheltered, the couple and their son, adhering to Bushido, the ethical code of the Japanese samurai, committed harakiri or suicide as prescribed for those facing shame (U.S. Passport Application, 23 May 1923; Elizabeth Coleman to Margaret Sanger, 23 June 1923 Reel S2, frame 342 of Katz, ed. Margaret Sanger Microfilm; "Missionary Couple and Son End Lives," Washington Post, 30 March 1932 and, 11 April 1932; "Missionary, His Wife and Son End Lives," Chicago Daily Tribune, 29 March 1932.)

Horace E. Coleman (1875-1932), a Quaker missionary and resident of Tokyo since 1907, wrote regularly on Sunday School education (U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925; "Missionary Couple and Son End Lives," Washington Post, 30 March 1932; Edith F. Sharpless, Quakerism in Japan: A Brief Account of the Origins and Development of the Religious Society of Friends in Japan [Philadelphia, Pa.: Friends World Committee for Consultation, 1944], appendix III.)

Sanger may refer to Emma Axtell Byles Cowperthwaite (1879-1970), American-born wife of elevator engineer Allan Cowperthwaite, who hosted the luncheon. The Cowperthwaites were in Yokohama on a two-year assignment, returning in 1923. ("Allan Cowperthwaite '94" in Cornell Alumni News, XXVI, no. 11 (6 December 1923): p. 9; "Obituaries," Smith Alumnae Quarterly 62, no. 2 [February 1971]: 63; "Mrs. Sanger Will Speak To Guests At Reception," Japan Advertiser, 16 March 1922.)

Harold Cox (1859-1936), an economist, journalist, and a former Conservative Party Member of Parliament, was editor of the Edinburgh Review from 1912 to 1929. Cox was a featured speaker at the November 1921 First American Birth Control Conference in New York. (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography accessed 10 November 2009; Sanger, Autobiography, pp.172, 296; see also Sanger to Rublee, 25 August 1921 in Katz, Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, vol. 1, pp. 309-10, 326-30.)

Bridget de Selincourt (Balkwill) (1910-1970), the daughter of Hugh and Janet de Selincourt, was twelve years old in 1922 ("Mr. Michael Balkwill," London Times, 6 November 1985).

Hugh de Selincourt (1878-1951), novelist and critic, was best known in England for his chronicles of village cricket matches. Sanger began an affair with de Selincourt in 1920 ("Mr. H. De Selincourt," London Times, 22 January 1951; Katz, Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, p. 281 note 14.)

Janet Wheeler de Selincourt, (1879-1955), a pianist, lived with her husband Hugh in an open marriage ("Deaths," London Times, 28 April 1955; 1901 British Census.)

Katheryene Cottier Eisenhart (1874-1951) was a San Francisco policewoman, who began work in 1913 as part of an experiment with using women detectives. (California Death Index, 1940-1997; San Francisco Call, Oct. 21, 1913, p. 1.)

Albert Einstein (1879-1955), the renowned German-born theoretical physicist, lectured in Japan from 17 November to 29 December 1922 (American National Biography Online accessed December 4, 2009; Einstein in Japan Collection, 1920-1923: Finding Aid, Princeton University Library, Manuscripts Division, 2008, Princeton, N.J.).

Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) was a British physician, psychologist, and one of the most prominent of the new European sex theorists. He met Sanger in London in 1914, and soon became her lover and intellectual mentor. He remained a close friend until his death. (Dictionary of National Biography online, accessed August 2, 2013; Katz, Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003], 1: 105, note 1.)

Lillian Griffs Fassett (1885-1974), the estranged second wife of millionaire businessman Newton C. Fassett, lived in Spokane, Washington and was deeply interested in the burgeoning birth control movement, serving as the secretary of the Washington Birth Control League (Social Security Death Index; "Mrs. N. C. Fassett Divorced," New York Times, 26 August 1922; "Mrs Sanger in Court Gets Floral Gifts," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 4 January 1917.)

William J. Fielding (1886-1973), was a writer of books on psychology, sex and love, and one of the most successful writers and publishers of the Haldeman-Julius series of Little Blue Books, which eventually included Sanger's What Every Girl Should Know and What Every Mother Should Know. Sanger also read the manuscript of the birth control chapter in Fielding's Sanity in Sex, which was translated into Japanese in 1921 (Social Security Death Index; William J. Fielding, Sanity in Sex [New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1920], pp. xv-xvii; Newsday, 12 April 1966.)

Benjamin Wilfred Fleisher (1870-1946), was the publisher and editor (1908-1940) of the Japan Advertiser, an English-language daily. He was married to

Blanche Blum Fleisher (1874-1942) ("B. W. Fleisher, 76, Ran Tokyo Paper," New York Times, 1 May 1946; California Death Index; "Wilfred Fleisher's Mother Dies on Coast at 67," Washington Post, 14 January 1942.)

"Mrs. Gannett" was Tsuneko Yamada Gauntlett (1873-1953), a well-known Japanese-born feminist associated with the suffrage movement and the Japanese Women's Christian Temperance Union. She married English-born missionary and University of Tokyo professor, George Edward Luckman Gauntlett (1869-1956). Shidzue Ishimoto thought Gauntlett "interjected a puritanical Christian conscience into her chores," forcing Ishimoto to retranslate on a few occasions ("Japan Feminist Dies," Los Angeles Times, 13 November 1953; 1871 England Census; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, 27, quote.) For more on Gauntlett, see Taeko Shibahara, "How Did Japanese Women Peace Activists Interact with European Women as they Negotiated between Nationalism and Transnational Peace Activism to Promote Peace, 1915-1935?"

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), poet, novelist, dramatist and philosopher, was one of the great figures in world literature. Goethe had several children out of wedlock and lived with a woman many years before marrying her (Encyclopedia Britannica Online accessed December 4, 2009.)

Eiji Habuto (?-1929), a gynecologist and sexologist, and author of popular books on human sexuality, founded the journal Sexual Desire and Humankind (Seiyoku to Jinsei) in the early 1920s (Frühstück, Colonizing Sex, pp. 55, 106.)

Masaaki Hachisuka (1871-1932), Cambridge-educated Marquis, held important posts in the Imperial household (Noboru Koyama, Japanese Students at Cambridge University in the Meiji Era, 1868-1912: Pioneers for the Modernization of Japan [Morrisville, N.C.: Lulu, 2004], p. 44; Richard Bowring, Fifty Years of Japanese at Cambridge: A Chronicle with Reminiscences, [Cambridge: Faculty of Oriental Studies, Cambridge University, 1998], p. 89.)

Masanao Hanihara (1876-1934), a career diplomat, was Japan's Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, and appointed as General Secretary of the Japanese delegation of the Washington Disarmament Conference. Hanihara had long experience with the United States, having served in Washington Embassy and as Consul-General in San Francisco, and was seen as favoring closer cooperation between Japan and the United States. He became the Japanese Ambassador to the United States in December 1922 ("Hint of Japan's Policy," New York Times, 25 November 1921 and "Ambassador Hanihara," New York Times, 16 December 1922; "Death Calls to an Ex-Envoy," Los Angeles Times, 20 December 1934.)

Gingirô Iijima, a pharmacist, opened the Ninshin Chôsetsujo (Pregnancy Control Center) in January 1924 (Callahan, "Dangerous Devices," p. 105.)

Tokikazu Ikematsu (1873-1953), a lawyer and police chief, served as Governor of Osaka from February 1920 to October 1922. (Shunjiro Kurita, Who's Who in Japan [Tokyo, 1913], 181.)

Otohei Inagaki (1862-1928), a professor at Tokyo University who specialized in agriculture, was a member of a committee tasked to study population problems. In 1926, Inagaki's prediction that Japan's population growth would stabilize once it reached 104 million (ca. 2200) was widely reported, but based on faulty calculations (The Japan Biographical Encyclopedia and Who's Who vol. 3 [Tokyo: Rengo Press, 1964-65], p. 374; Ryoichi Ishii, Population Pressure and Economic Life in Japan [London: P. S. King, 1937], p. 129.)

Kōsai Inoue (1870-1943), Governor of Kanagawa Prefecture, which included Yokohama.

Baron Keikichi Ishimoto (1887-1951?), the son of a war hero, was a mining engineer, labor reformer and a Christian humanist. Chiefly interested in labor reform, he was open to new progressive causes and became an advocate for birth control following his wife's lead (Ishimoto, Facing Two Ways, pp. 104-05; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, pp. 4-6, 20, 25.)

Baroness Shidzue Ishimoto (Kato) (1897-2001), a feminist, pacifist and socialist organizer, pioneered the birth control movement in Japan. She was inspired to lead the birth control cause after meeting Sanger in New York in 1920. In the summer of 1921, she formed the short-lived Birth Control League of Japan. In May 1922, she hosted the first meeting of the newly formed Birth Control Study Society. Known as the "Margaret Sanger of Japan," she was the driving force of the movement until the late 1920s, and opened several birth control clinics in the 1930s, until her arrest and imprisonment in 1937 during a crackdown on radicals. After World War II she became a prominent politician and was active in public life into her 100s. ("Shidzue Kato," London Times, 1 January 2002; Hopper, New Woman of Japan, pp. 20-22.)

Elizabeth Rosevear Jewett (1866-1940), was the wife of successful silk merchant John Hill Jewett, who spent most of his life in Japan ("Mrs. J. H. M. Jewett," New York Times, 28 July 1940; The Jewett Family of America, Year Book of 1958 [Rowley, Mass.: Jewett Family of America, 1958], p. 29.)

William Eugene "Pussyfoot" Johnson (1862-1945) was a prominent prohibitionist who became famous for his efforts against bootleggers in the Indian Territory and Oklahoma. After the passage of the Volstead Act in 1919, Johnson toured most of the world, spreading his anti-liquor propaganda ("W.E. Johnson Dies, Dry Crusader," New York Times, 3 February 1945.)

Tokijirô Kaji (1858-1930), a gynecologist, was director of the Tokyo People's Hospital (Tokyo Heimin Byoin), which he founded especially to treat poor women. He was an early member of the short-lived Birth Control League of Japan and the Birth Control Study Society, and an outspoken activist in seeking state support for birth control services (Callahan, "Dangerous Devices," pp. 82, 97; Frühstück, Colonizing Sex, pp. 138, 140, and 148-149; Hopper, A New Woman of Japan, pp. 25-26.)

Baron Naibu Kanda (1857-1923) was an American-educated literature professor at Tokyo University, a member of the House of Peers and an authority on foreign language teaching in Japan. Kanda was a member of the Washington Disarmament Conference delegation ("Baron Naibu Kanda Dead," New York Times, 23 December 1923; Japan Biographical Encyclopedia, p. 494; Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armament, p. 33.)

Admiral Baron Tomosaburô Kato (1861-1923) was a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War and career officer in the Japanese navy. He led Japan's delegation to the Washington Disarmament Conference in 1921, sailing back to Japan with Sanger on the Taiyo Maru. He was named prime minister in June 1922 (Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan Online accessed December 4, 2009; "Premier Kato Dies," New York Times, 24 August 1923.)

Shirô Kawada (Kawata) (1883-1942), widely read socialist economist at Kyoto University who wrote on the place of women in Japanese society. Among his books were Fujin Mondai (Women's Issues), published in 1910, Tochi keizairon (Economic Theory of Land) and Kazoku seido to fujin mondai (Family Systems and Women's Issues) both published in 1924. ("Socialism in Japan," Living Age 304, no. 3913 [30 January 1920]: 271.)

Hikoji Kawaguchi (1870-?), lawyer, police official, and politician, who previously was Governor of Oita-ken and Nara-ken, served as Governor of Aichi from May 1921 to June 1923. (Yasujiro Ishikawa, ed. Who's Who in Japan [Tokyo, 1916], 274; "Japanese News," Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Adviser, June 19, 1923.)

Count Tetsutaro Kawamura (1870-1945) was the British-educated son of Count Sumiyoshi Kawamura, who had briefly served as foster-father for the Emperor's grandsons, Princes Michi (later Hirohito) and Chichibu (Yasuhito) until his death in 1904. Tetsutaro Kawamura wrote a book on American business prospects in 1906 (Saikin Katsud«× Hoku-Bei Jigy«× Annai) (Koyama, Japanese Students at Cambridge, pp. 95-6; Peggy Seagrave, The Yamato Dynasty: The Secret History of Japan's Imperial Family [New York, N.Y.: Random House, 2001], p. 87.)

Anne Kennedy (1885-1966) was the executive secretary of the American Birth Control League, stationed in New York City. Kennedy joined Sanger in London at the Fifth International New-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference in July 1922 (Social Security Death Index.)

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) the noted economist, was a Malthusian league member and vice-president of Marie Stopes's Society for Constructive Birth Control. Author of The Economic Consequences of the Peace, he served as president of the Economic section at the July 1922 Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference in London (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography accessed November 10, 2009; Rosanna Ledbetter, A History of the Malthusian League, 1877-1927 [Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1976], p. 195; Report of the Fifth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference, Raymond Pierpoint, ed. [London, William Heinemann Medical Books, 1922], p. 60.)

Possibly Eiichi Kimura (1879-1947), Secretary of the Foreign Office, who had been part of the Japanese delegation at the Washington Naval Conference, and on the Taiyo Maru with Sanger (Stephen S. Large, Sh«×wa Japan: Political, Economic, and Social History, 1926-1989 [New York: Routledge, 1998], p. 176; Washington Conference on the Limitation of Arms, p. 33.)

Miyoke Kohashi (1883?-1922), an editor of Shufu no tomo (The Housewife's Friend), studied journalism in the U.S. (Seattle Passenger & Crew Lists, 1882-1957; "Mme. Miyoke Koharshi," New York Times, 9 June 1922; Mrs. Muraoka, "What Japanese Women are Reading," Japan Advertiser, 1 March 1922.)

Albert Levering (1869-1929), an illustrator and painter, who illustrated the Sunday New York Tribune in 1921-22, before becoming a book and magazine illustrator ("Albert Levering, Illustrator, Dead," New York Times, 15 April 1929.)

Anna Lifshiz (1900?-?), Sanger's personal secretary who worked in New York at the American Birth Control League (Madeline Gray, Margaret Sanger: A Biography of the Champion of Birth Control, [New York, N.Y.: Richard Marek Publishers, 1979], p. 143; Katz, Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, p. 256.)

Charles (Bogue) Luffman (Luffmann) (1862-1920), a horticulturist and writer, authored The Harvest of Japan, an account of his travels there that includes descriptions of the agriculture, rural population and horticultural landscape (Australian Dictionary of Australian Biography Online accessed Sept. 8, 2009; Charles Bogue Luffmann, The Harvest of Japan: A book of travel with some account of the trees, gardens, agriculture, peasantry, and rural requirements of Japan [London: T. C. and E. C. Jank, 1920].)

Caroline MacDonald (1974-1931), a Canadian-born national secretary of the YWCA in Japan, became known for comforting and sometimes converting death row prisoners in Tokyo. Called the "White Angel of Tokyo," she left the YWCA, after one of her Bible class students was convicted of murdering a geisha and executed, to dedicate herself to visiting prisoners. She received the manuscript for A Gentleman in Prison from Tokichi Ishii, who was on death row for murdering a geisha. MacDonald was invited to at least two of Sanger's meetings in Tokyo, finding her "a very interesting and nice woman" who had gotten "the right end" of the population issue (Patricia E. Roy, "Review of Margaret Prang, A Heart at Leisure from Itself: Caroline Macdonald of Japan," Historical Studies in Education [Fall 1996]: 254-55; Ontario, Canada Deaths, 1969-1934; Margaret Prang, A Heart at Leisure from Itself: Caroline MacDonald of Japan [Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997], pp. 188-89.)

"Mashima" is Kan Majima (1893-1969), among the first physicians in Japan to take up the cause of birth control. With Senji Yamamoto and Isoo Abe, Majima launched Sanji chosetsu hyoron (Birth Control Review) in 1925. He helped found the Japan Birth Control League in 1931 (Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan Online accessed Dec. 4, 2009; Callahan, "Dangerous Devices," p. 121.)

Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), the British economist who in his 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population had argued that population growth would exceed the world's food supply unless some action was taken. His solution was to control population growth through abstinence or delayed marriage, not artificial contraception (Ledbetter, History of the Malthusian League, 257, xii-xiii, 3-4.)

Roderick O. Matheson (1876-?), was a Canadian-born journalist who since 1918 was the news editor of the Japan Times & Mail. Matheson also served as the Chicago Tribune's foreign correspondent in Tokyo (Mihran Nicholas Ask and S. Gershanek, Who Was Who in Journalism, 1925-28 [Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research, 1978], pp. 254-55.)

Shōnen Matsumura (1872-1960), was the "father of Japanese entomology," and author of a twelve-volume work, Thousand Insects of Japan (1904-1921). No additional information on his work in birth control has been found. (John L. Capinera, ed., Encyclopedia of Entomology, Volume 3 [London: Springer, 2008], p. 2306.)

Komakichi Matsuoka (1888-1958), a labor leader and politician, was a founding member of the short-lived Birth Control Study Society, formed in May 1922 (Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan accessed Dec. 4, 2009.)

Hiroaki (Kaneyuki) Miura (1871-1931) was a Kyoto University historian specializing in medieval and legal history and paleontology. No further information on his birth control writings has been found (Kodansha Encyclopedia Online accessed Dec. 11, 2009.)

John R. Mott (1865-1955), a missionary activist, was general secretary of the International Committee of the Y.M.C.A. and founder and former secretary for the World's Student Christian Federation. His wife,

Lelia White Mott (1866-1952), a national council member of the Y.W.C.A. often accompanied her husband on his world travels (American National Biography Online accessed Dec. 4, 2009; "Mrs. John Mott, Wife of Religious Leader," New York Times, 30 September 1952.)

Viscount Nishio is probably Tadakata Nishio, the descendent of Viscount Tadaatsu Nishio (1850-1910), who was admitted to the House of Peers in 1918.

Ryûshirô Ogawa opened a clinic in Tokyo, the Nihon Ninshin Chôsetsu Sôdanjo (Japan Pregnancy Control Consultation Center) in June 1924, under the guidance of Dr. Tokijirô Kaji. He was arrested in 1931 under Japan's abortion law (Callahan, "Dangerous Devices," pp. 105 and 182.)

The secretary for the Japanese Society for the Study of Birth Control may have been Mataichi Oguri (1897-1938), a writer and the biographer of Fumio Yano (Sandra T. W. Davis, Intellectual Change and Political Development in Early Modern Japan: Ono Azusa, a Case Study [Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1980], p. 186.)

Sadao Oguri (1861-1935), a gynecologist and the brother of noted socialist writer, Ryukei Fumio Yano, learned about contraceptives on a trip to England. When he returned to Japan he published "Ninshin seigen hô," (pregnancy limitation) in Fujin eisei zasshi, (22 February 1902, pp. 35-37), a reprint of a version published in the magazine Niroku shinpô. The article summarized the contraception methods advocated by Annie Besant, including suppositories, rubber pessaries and sea sponges. According to Kaji, he also translated a book on birth control, Shakai Kairyo Jitsuron (Key of Social Reformation) in 1903, which, according to one source, gave him the idea of making a quinine-based suppository called "kijonotomo" (Lady's Friend), one of the few contraceptives on the market in 1922 Japan (Tokijiro Kaji, "Methods of Birth Control Known and Used Japan," in Pierpont, Report of the Fifth International, pp. 297-99; Callahan, "Dangerous Devices," pp. 39, fn 31 and 53.)

Kischichiro Oka (1868-1947), was a police superintendent in Tokyo or Yokohama.

Tatsunosuke Okano was an author and founding member of the short-lived Birth Control Study Society, formed in May 1922 (WorldCat.)

Clare Ousley [DuBose] (1896-1931), an occasional journalist, was married to Associated Press reporter Clarence DuBose, then stationed in Tokyo. She wrote one other article for the Tribune comparing the costumes of Japanese and Western theatre ("Obituary," Port Arthur News (Texas), 31 October 1931.)

Mary Field Parton (1878-1969) was a social worker and journalist, closely associated with Clarence Darrow, who had married San Francisco newspaperman Lemuel Parton in 1913. ("Mrs. Lemuel F. Parton, 91, Writer and Social Worker," New York Times, July 4, 1969, p. 21.)

"Mrs. Page" was Alice Nash Gardiner Payne (1872-?), the wife of William Thomas Payne, a shipping executive based in Yokohama ("William T. Payne, Shipper, Dies at 77," New York Times, 12 October 1928; International Genealogical Index.)

"Mrs. Pearse" might possibly be Mary Agnes Pearse (1889-?), who returned from Yokohama to Lillian Fassett's hometown of Seattle in 1923 (Seattle Passenger and Crew lists, 1882-1957.)

George Bronson Rea (1869-1936), an American journalist and publisher of the Far Eastern Review of Shanghai, a right-wing monthly that, after 1920, took money from Japan to support reactionaries in the government and incursions into China. Though he served as an advisor to Sun Yat-sen's Nationalist forces, he also became an advisor to Japan's puppet administration of Manchuria. (Paul French, Through the Looking Glass: China's Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao [Hong Kong, 2009], 6; David Shavit, The United States in Asia: A Historical Dictionary [New York, 1990], 413.)

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) was the twenty-sixth president of the United States (1901-9) and a better-known proponent of "race suicide." (American National Biography Online accessed December 4, 2009.)

Clara Louise Rowe (McGraw) (1895?-1950?), was an ABCL secretary from 1921-1923 (Editor's Telephone Conversation with Patricia Ziegler, 28 February 2002; ABCL, Minutes of the Board of Directors, 2 October 1923, Reel S61, frame 90 in Katz, Margaret Sanger Microfilm.

Juliet Barrett Rublee (1875-1966), Sanger's closest friend and an important financial supporter of the birth control movement, was also a vice president of the ABCL (Paul Marashio, "A Feminist Voice in New Hampshire," 1982 manuscript [Dartmouth College Library, Hanover, N.H.]; ABCL Board of Directors Minutes, 12 January 1922, Reel S61, frame 46, in Katz, Margaret Sanger; Katz, Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, p. 219.)

Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872-1970), third Earl Russell, was a philosopher, mathematician and political activist. He visited Japan during his tenure as a guest lecturer at the University of Peking, China, in 1920-21. Russell, a pacifist and socialist, was "dogged by police spies" and hounded by an intrusive press that had mistakenly reported him dead from the flu upon his arrival (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography accessed November 11, 2007; Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, Volume II, 1914-1944 [Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1968], pp. 191-94, quote, 192.)

Hiroshi Saito (1886-1939), was a diplomat who had served in Washington, D.C. and London before becoming Consul General in Seattle in 1921. Saito was a delegate to the 1921-22 Washington Disarmament Conference and was known for his support of amity with Western democracies. He served as Consul General in New York (1923-28) and as the Japanese Ambassador to the United States (1934-1938). (Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, 373; Pacific Magazine 8-9 [1928], 136.)

Kadzu Saito (?-?), formerly a consul-general in Shanghai, was appointed as the Japanese Consul at Vancouver, Canada in August 1921. (Godfrey E. P. Hertslet, The Foreign Office List and Diplomatic and Consular Year Book for 1922 [London: Harrison & Sons, 1922], 475.)

Grant Sanger (1908-1989), thirteen-years-old, was Margaret Sanger's middle child and attended the Peddie School in Hightstown, N.J. (Sanger, Autobiography, p. 316.)

Stuart Sanger (1903-1995), eighteen years old, was Margaret Sanger's oldest child, and a junior at the Peddie School in Hightstown, N.J. (Stuart Sanger to Lawrence Lader, May 24, 1954 [MS-Unfilmed].)

Count Tsuneha Sano (1871-1956) was a Japanese Rear Admiral and leader of the boy scout movement in Japan ("Boy Scouts of Japan Have an Admiral to Lead Them," New York Times, 10 October 1926; "Admiral Tsuneha Sano," New York Times, 27 January 1956.)

Marquis Sanaki was likely Marquis Yukitada Sasaki (1893- ), the grandson of Takayuka Sasaki, and a member of the Japanese nobility and vice-president of the House of Peers. He became a Shinto priest and in 1951 was made chief priest at the Ise Grande Shrines and then of the Meiji shrine. He was appointed president of Kokugakuin University in 1963 (The Japan Biographical Encyclopedia & Who's Who, 2nd Ed. [Tokyo: Rengo Press, 1961], p. 1326; Motonori Ono and William P. Woodard, Shinto the Kami Way [Rutland, Vt.: C. E. Tuttle, 1962], p. 18.)

Kojiro Sato (1862-1927), a retired Lieutenant-General and veteran of the Russo-Japanese War, wrote a much discussed militarist treatise, If Japan and America Fight (1921), which argued that the United States aimed to dominate Asia economically and that only Japan stood in its way (Trevor Nevitt Dupuy, Curt Johnson, David L. Bongard, eds. Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography [New York: HarperCollins, 1992], p. 658; Robert Joseph Charles Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War [Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1961], p. 18.)

"Kujiro" Sawada was Junjirô Sawada (?), a prominent sexologist and prolific writer on birth control (Frühstück, Colonizing Sex, pp. 103 and 106.)

George Hawthorne Scidmore (1854-1922), a career foreign service officer, served as Consul General in Yokohama from 1913-1922 (Who Was Who in America, Vol. 1 [Chicago, Ill.: Marquis-Who's Who, 1966], pp. 1093.)

Mr. Seito was Yoshinao Seto who translated Fielding's Sanity in Sex to Japanese as Sei No Shakaiteki K«×satsu.

Baron Kijuro Shidehara (1872-1951), a lawyer and politician associated with the Mitsubishi financial combine, served as the Ambassador to the United States and a delegate to the Washington Peace Conference in 1921-22. Shidehara sought to promote Japanese interests by cooperation with Western powers, and after the Conference his policies were criticized as weak and conciliatory. Shidehara withdrew from politics in the 1930s but was selected as Japan's second post-World War II Prime Minister, serving only one term (1945-46) (Janet Hunter, Concise Dictionary of Modern Japanese History [Berkeley, 1984], 197.)

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), English Romantic poet whose passionate and non-conforming personal life, his vocal atheism, and his radical political views, reinforced contemporary resistance to his poetry (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography accessed November 10, 2009.)

J. Noah Slee (1860-1943) was a South African-born businessman who emigrated to the U.S. in 1873 and founded the Three-In-One Oil Company in 1894. He met Margaret Sanger in 1921, escorted her on her 1922 world tour, and they married in London in September 1922 ("J. N. H. Slee, Head of 3-In-1 Oil Firm," New York Times, 23 June 1943.)

Socrates (c.470 BCE-399 BCE) was the Greek philosopher whose teachings and thought, transmitted through Plato's dialogues, laid the foundation for Western philosophy (Encyclopedia Britannica Online accessed December 4, 2009.)

Marie Carmichael Stopes (1880-1958) was a Scottish-born paleontologist who had become the best-known birth control reformer in Britain. Stopes had visited Japan for eighteen months (1907-1909) on a fossil-collecting trip before she quit science to focus on birth control. Stopes met Sanger in 1915 and while they were initially friendly, the two fell out in 1921 when Stopes appeared in the United States under the auspices of Sanger's rival, Mary Ware Dennett. Stopes's Married Love (1918) and Contraception (1929) were translated into Japanese. (June Rose, Marie Stopes and the Sexual Revolution [Boston, Mass.: Faber and Faber, 1992], pp. 46-57 and 154.)

Bunji Suzuki (1885-1946) was a labor union leader and early birth control supporter (Encyclopedia Britannica Online accessed December 4, 2009.)

Heizaburo Takashima (1865-1946), a child psychologist who taught at Gakushuin University, Nihon Women's University, and Toyo University, edited Child Studies, and published textbooks and articles on child psychology, biology, and education (for his life and career, see Keiko Katoda, "Kaisetsu" [Introduction] in Heizaburo Takashima, Kyoiku ni oyo shitaru jido kenkyu [How child education would benefit from studies of children] [Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Sentaa, 1985; originally published in 1936), 1-13]). It is difficult to know Takashima's take on birth control. His publications (which come to about 100 books and numerous articles) focus largely on child psychology and education. In his book published in 1936, he advises women, in a few pages, to choose their spouses carefully and have superior children. But it appears that he wrote little on birth control itself in his lifetime.

Korekiyo Takahashi (1854-1936) was the Prime Minister of Japan and president of the Rikken Seiyukai political party. Despite his experience in management and finance, when he served as president of the Yokohama Specie Bank (1906), the Bank of Japan (1911), and as Minister of Finance (1913-1921), he was an ineffective prime minister who could not control the factions within his party, resigning in June 1922 (Encyclopedia of World Biography 2nd ed. Vol. 15, pp. 84-85. [Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research, 2004].)

Sanger's reference to Tate is unclear. The Japan Weekly Chronicle of 16 March 1922 reported that "Mr. Yakata, the Chief of the Foreign Section of the Kanagawa police, accompanied by an official interpreter, proceeded on board and questioned her behind closed doors." Neither has been identified.

Possibly Count Seiichiro Terashima (1870-1929), an American-educated member of the House of Peers (World Biographical Information System [Munich: K. Saur Verlag, 2004]; Naoichi Masaoka, ed. Japan to America: A Symposium of Papers by Political Leaders and Representatives Citizens of Japan on Conditions in Japan and on the Relations between Japan and the United States (New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1914), p. 64.)

Takejiro Tokonami (1867-1935) was a Japanese bureaucrat and politician who served as Home Minister under the Takashi and Korekiyo administrations (1918-1922). He was a conservative member of the Diet associated with the Seiyukai Party and later the Seiyu Honto Party. Tokonami aimed to become Prime Minister, but was unsuccessful (Sheldon Garon, The State and Labor in Modern Japan [Berkeley, 1990], 975; Janet Hunter, Concise Dictionary of Modern Japanese History [Berkeley, 1984], 228.)

Count Kosai Uchida (1865-1936) was a foreign-service officer who held ambassadorial posts in China, Austria and the United States, who served as Japan's Foreign Minister under five different prime ministers (1911-1912, 1918-1923, and 1923-1934). He was appointed to the House of Peers in 1930. (Louis-Frédéric and Käthe Rothe, eds. Japan Encyclopedia [Cambridge, Mass., 2002], 1005.)

Kazutami Ukita (1859-1946) was a Yale-educated political scientist at Waseda University (Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan Online accessed December 4, 2009.)

Raizo Wakabayashi (1866-1941) was a lawyer and politician who had served as the Japanese Inspector-General of Korean Police, and as Governor of a number of prefectures before becoming Governor of Kyoto from July 1921 to October 1922. He was appointed to the House of Peers in December 1922 (Yasujiro Ishikawa, ed. Who's Who in Japan [Tokyo, 1916], 803; "News from Japan," Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Adviser, 22 December 1922.)

Charles Beecher Warren (1870-1936), prominent international lawyer and diplomat, served as ambassador to Japan from June 1921 to March 1923. He was married to

Helen Hunt Wetmore Warren (1874-1941) (National Cyclopedia of American Biography; "Chas. B. Warren, Former Envoy, Dies at Detroit," Chicago Daily Tribune, 4 February 1936; "Mrs. Charles B. Warren," New York Times, 14 April 1941.)

H. G. Wells (1866-1946), the renowned British author and social thinker, started a love affair with Margaret Sanger in 1920 that lasted, on and off, into the 1930s. Wells had attended the Washington Disarmament Conference, writing a series of newspaper essays about the issues. In "The Future of Japan," published on 21 November 1921, Wells reported that Japan's overpopulation was the root of its aggressive efforts at imperialism, and suggested, "that the troubles arising from excessive fecundity within a country justify not an aggressive imperialism on the part of that country, but a sufficient amount of birth control within its proper boundaries." Wells did not travel to Japan (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography accessed November 10, 2009; Wells, "The Future of Japan," reprinted in Washington and the Riddle of Peace [New York, N.Y.: Macmillan Company, 1922], pp. 101-11.)

Kaiser Wilhelm II (Frederick Wilhelm Viktor Albert) (1859-1941) was the last emperor of Germany and King of Prussia (1888-1918) (Encyclopedia Britannica Online.)

Hugh Robert Wilson (1885-1946), American diplomat, held a number of junior diplomatic posts in Cuba, Argentina, Austria and Switzerland, and Japan ("Hugh R. Wilson Dies," New York Times, 30 December 1946.)

Vashti, a Persian queen described in the Bible's Book of Esther (1:9-22), disobeyed her husband, King Ahasuerus, when he drunkenly told her to "show her charms" before an audience of nobles. She was deposed for defying her husband, and eventually replaced by Esther. Though the tale ostensibly gave a lesson that the man should be king in his home, feminists lauded Vashti as a heroine (Louise Jacobs, Oxford Concise Companion to the Jewish Religion Online [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003-] accessed Dec. 4, 2009.)

Shichitaro Yada (1879-1957), a lawyer and diplomat who had spent most of his career in China, was the Japanese Consul General, stationed in San Francisco from 1920-23 (Barbara J. Brooks, Japan's Imperial Diplomacy: Consuls, Treaty Ports, and War in China, 1895-1938 [Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986], p. 67; Peter Duus, Ramon H. Myers, and Mark R. Peattie, eds., The Japanese Informal Empire in China, 1895-1937 [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989], pp. 385-86.)

Tatsu Yaguchi (1889-1936) a translator of European literature into Japanese, also translated Stopes' Married Love (Jeffrey M. Angles, "Writing the Love of Boys: Representations of Male-male Desire in the Literature of Murayama Kaita and Edogawa Ranpo," PhD diss. [Ohio State University, 2003], p. 114.)

Waka Yamada (1879-1957), a woman's rights activist who had escaped forced prostitution in the United States and returned to Japan to speak on suffrage, free love, and abortion; she also opened shelters for battered women and children. Yamada was a conservative when it came to issues of motherhood, supporting maternal protection laws, and believed that only exceptional women should work outside the home (Tomoko Yamazaki, The Story of Yamada Waka: From Prostitute to Feminist Pioneer [New York, N.Y.: Kodansha International, 1985], pp. 129-30.)

Kikue Yamakawa (1890-1980) was a socialist and communist who wrote and translated books on women and socialism and was active in debates on motherhood protection and the role of women workers in industry (Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan, p. 247.)

Sanehiko Yamamoto (1882 or 1885-1952) was a politician and publisher who founded the Kaizosha publishing company in 1919 and launched Kaizo, a liberal socialist journal which lasted until 1955 (Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan Online accessed December 4, 2009; Japan Biographical Encyclopedia, 1873.)

Senji Yamamoto (1889-1929), biologist, activist and politician, was inspired by Sanger to become a birth control movement leader in Osaka. He translated her Family Limitation into Japanese in 1922, and helped found the Osaka Sanji Seigen Kenkyûkai (Osaka Birth Control Research Society) and launch and edit the Sanji Chôsetsu Hyôron (Birth Control Review). The reference to his wife is likely a typographical error, as she was not involved in birth control work (Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan Online accessed December 4, 2009; Callahan, "Dangerous Devices," pp. 107-21.)

Keiichi Yamasaki (1882-?) was a Foreign Service officer who had served at the Japanese Embassy in London, Chicago, Shanghai, and from 1921-24, in Honolulu. In Hawaii he was known to advocate for the expatriation of the Hawaiian-born Nisei of Japanese descent, calling them American citizens, not Japanese (Peggy Levitt and Mary C. Waters, Eds. The Changing Face of Home: The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation [Washington, D.C., 2008], 40.)

Akiko Yanagihara (1885-1967), known as Byakuren (white lotus), a noble-born, well-known poet and social activist, left her wealthy, industrialist husband in 1921 and publicly confessed to an illicit love affair with a labor leader, creating a national scandal that stirred up conservative protests and a public debate over Japanese marriage and women's position in society. Her early poetry appeared in the anthology Fumie (1915) (Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan Online accessed December 4, 2009.)

Fumio Yano (1850-1931), politician, diplomat and writer, was a leading intellectual of the Meiji period (Joyce C. Lebra, "Yano Fumio: Meiji Intellectual, Party Leader, and Bureaucrat," Monumenta Nipponica 20, no. 1 [1965]: 1-14.)