(Born 1867, died 1947) ran an orphanage in Kōchi,

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

It is said she was the niece of

Sakamoto Ryōma was a Japanese ''samurai'', a '' shishi'' and influential figure of the ''Bakumatsu'' and establishment of the Empire of Japan in the late Edo period. He was a low-ranking ''samurai'' from the Tosa Domain on Shikoku and became an active oppon ...

. Her mother is said to have been, Otome, (Sakamoto's older sister) and her father was Jyuan, a doctor. When Kikue was two years old, their families lost contact and so she didn't have much contact with Sakamoto. To this day their actual relationship remains controversial. When she was five, her father died and she was left to live at her uncle's house in Kagami Village. At the age of 14, she entered Kōchi's "Eiwa Women's School" run by Annie Dowd of Missouri, USA. After that she became a teacher and worked as an

elementary school A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ed ...

teacher for 21 years. After that, she became the head teacher of a Kōchi Hakuaien orphanage. She raised her own five children along with the orphans in the school. She devoted her whole life to this cause, but at the time, she wasn't well understood by society. She raised 356 children. The orphanage she ran stood at the site of the current Shin Hankyu Hotel in Honmachi, Kōchi City, but was destroyed during the Kōchi fire bombing of ., Kubota Zentarou, Shiota Masatoshi, Nakata Masayuki, Yoshimoto Aoshi, 1986 Kochi City, Kochi Prefecture

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Okanoue, Kikue Japanese educators 1947 deaths 1867 births People from Kōchi Prefecture 20th-century Japanese women educators 20th-century Japanese educators 19th-century Japanese women educators 19th-century Japanese educators