ABSTRACT
The Woman’s Board of Missions of the Interior, one of the three woman’s boards affiliated with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions assumed the responsibility of the missionary work at Kobe Home/Kobe Girls’ School/Kobe College (hereafter Kobe College for the general term encompassing 1873 to 1909) in 1874, a year before Kobe Home was officially founded under the Japan Mission of the American Board.1 Their mission work at Kobe College between 1874 and 1909 coincided the golden age of the WBMI. A total of thirty-seven American women missionaries were sent to Kobe College between 1873 and 1909, supported by either the WBMI or the Woman’s Board of Missions (hereafter WBM). This chapter focuses on the American side of the missionary work at Kobe College: the WBMI and the lives of the Kobe College women missionaries in America before their departure for Japan.
