Kazuko Watanabe (February 11, 1927 – December 30, 2016) was a Japanese

religious sister A religious sister (abbreviated ''Sr.'' or Sist.) in the Catholic Church is a woman who has taken public vows in a religious institute dedicated to apostolic works, as distinguished from a nun who lives a cloistered monastic life dedicated to pr ...

educationist Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Var ...

, and writer. Her Christian name was Sister Saint John. She was a member of the

Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur (Congregationis Sororum a Domina Nostra Namurcensi) are a Catholic institute of religious sisters, founded to provide education to the poor. The institute was founded in Amiens, France, in 1804, but the opposi ...

and served as president of their

Notre Dame Seishin University is a private university, private women's colleges, women's college in Okayama, Okayama, Japan, run by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. The predecessor of the school, women's school, was founded in 1886, and it was chartered as a university in ...

Okayama Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Chūgoku region of Honshu. Okayama Prefecture has a population of 1,906,464 (1 February 2018) and has a geographic area of 7,114 Square kilometre, km2 (2,746 sq mi). Okayama Prefectur ...

, from 1963 to 1990.

Life and career

She was born in Asahikawa, Hokkaido, Japan in 1927. Her father was

Jōtarō Watanabe was a general in the early Shōwa period Imperial Japanese Army, noted as one of the victims of the February 26 Incident. Biography Early career Watanabe was a native of Komaki, Aichi, as the eldest of a tobacco merchant, Wada Takeemon. His fa ...

, lieutenant-general of the army and a commander of Asahikawa 7th Division. He was 53 when she was born. She was the youngest of four siblings and the second oldest sister. In 1936, when she was 9 years old, her father, general and educational commissioner at that time, was killed by young officers of a rebel group in the February 26 Incident. She was traumatized by having to watch as her father was mowed down by 43 bullets; the executioners standing one meter away. In 1945 she was baptized into the Catholic church. In 1951 she obtained a bachelor's degree from the

University of the Sacred Heart, Tokyo The is a Japanese private women's university located in Hiroo, Shibuya, Tokyo. It was established in 1916 as a special school (''senmon gakkō'') by the Society of the Sacred Heart. It became a university in 1948 and is one of the oldest women ...

. In 1956 she joined the

in Hiroshima. In 1962 she received her PhD (Philosophy) from

Boston College Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classifie ...

. In September, she was appointed professor of Notre Dame Seishin University, Okayama. In 1977 she was diagnosed with depression. In 1981 her first book was printed. Since then, she has published 17 books, co-authored one, and translated another. In 1984 she translated for

Mother Teresa Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu, MC (; 26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997), better known as Mother Teresa ( sq, Nënë Tereza), was an Indian-Albanian Catholic nun who, in 1950, founded the Missionaries of Charity. Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu () was bo ...

when the Holy Mother visited Japan. In 1990 she was appointed honorary president of

and the administrative director of Notre Dame Seishin School. From 1992 to 1996 she was the administrative director of the Japanese Federation of Catholic Schools. In 1996 she visited the headquarters of the Order of

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

. In 2012 her book Bloom Where You Are Planted (original title in Japanese) became a bestseller and sold more than two million copies. December 30, 2016, at the age of 89, she died of pancreatic cancer.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Watanabe, Kazuko 1927 births 2016 deaths Japanese Roman Catholic religious sisters and nuns University of the Sacred Heart (Japan) alumni Sophia University alumni Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur 20th-century Roman Catholic nuns 21st-century Roman Catholic nuns