Meet Takeda Kiyoko (1917–2018), a remarkable woman, whose life-course defies the stereotypes of Japanese women in modern Japan. Told in her own words, these memoirs focus on “encounters”— the individuals whom she met in her travels to Asia, the United States and Europe, and through her involvement in organisations such as the YWCA and World Student Christian Federation (WSCF), and the progressive Japanese thinkers that came up in her research (the encounter between Christianity and Japanese thinkers of the modern period (from 1867)). Takeda introduces us to her mother, whose thoughts on women’s higher education and marriage were ahead of her times, and to her encounter with Christianity at the Christian girls’ school she attended after Japanese high school. Her intellectual world expanded with her involvement with Christian organisations such as the YWCA, and the WSCF, and when she went to the USA as an exchange student.

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Translated by: Vanessa Ward