Background
Yayoi Yoshioka was born on 29 April 1871 in Shizuoka. She was the second daughter of Washiyama Yosai, a doctor of Chinese style medicine.
吉岡 彌生
Yayoi Yoshioka was born on 29 April 1871 in Shizuoka. She was the second daughter of Washiyama Yosai, a doctor of Chinese style medicine.
At the age of seventeen she determined to make a career of medicine and went to Tokyo to enter a school called the Saisei Gakusha. In 1892 she passed the national examination for medical practitioners and returned to Shizuoka to set up her own practice. In 1895 she went to Tokyo once more and opened a practice in Hongo.
As a head of the National Federation of Women’s Educators, she worked to set up a system of women’s colleges and in 1937 became the first woman member of the Educational Council. In 1946 she became an advisor to the Welfare Ministry. In 1947, as a result of the purge law promulgated by the Occupation Forces, she was banned from public and educational activities, but the ban was lifted in 1951, and the following year she became head of the Tokyo Women’s Medical College.
She married Yoshioka Arata (the marriage was not registered until 1908).