Kusumoto Ine
Kusumoto Ine was born on May 31, 1827. See ranking, bio blurb, and everyone else born that day.
About Kusumoto Ine
Kusumoto Ine (楠本 イネ, 31 May 1827 – 27 August 1903; born Shiimoto Ine 失本 稲) was a Japanese physician. She was the first female doctor of Western medicine in Japan. She was the daughter of Kusumoto Taki, who was a courtesan from Nagasaki; and the German physician Philipp Franz von Siebold, who worked on Dejima, an island foreigners were restricted to during Japan's long period of seclusion from the world. Ine was also known as O-Ine and later in life took the name Itoku (伊篤). In Japanese she is often called Oranda O-Ine ("Dutch O-Ine") for her association with Dejima and its Dutch-language Western learning. Siebold was banished from Japan in 1829 but managed to provide for Ine and her mother and arranged for his students and associates to care for them. Ine's reputation grew after she became a doctor of Western medicine, and she won the patronage of the feudal lord Date Munenari. She studied in various parts of Japan under numerous teachers, one of whom impregnated her—likely having raped her—resulting in her only daughter; she never married. She settled in Tokyo after the country ended its seclusion, and assisted in the birth by one of Emperor Meiji's concubines in 1873. Since her death Ine has been the subject of novels, plays, comics, and musicals in Japan.