Kono Yasui Kono_Yasui
Period One: Profile Period Two:Research Activity Period Three: Kono Yasui's Contribution
Period Four: Virtual Science Lab Yasui Top Page
Period One: Profile
What was Kono Yasui like as a child?
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Kono Yasui (right) studying with a friend at the Women's Higher Normal School (1901).
She was born in the village of Sanbonmatsu in Kagawa Prefecture in 1880. As a child, Kono liked nothing better than to read. After graduating from a four-year lower elementary school, she enrolled in the only upper elementary school in the area. During this time, her father Chushichi Yasui, a Meiji era thinker, had her read Encouragement of Learning by a famous thinker and educator of the period, Yukichi Fukuzawa. Both parents were very well read and serious about education.

When she was required to study the Analects of Confucius at school, Kono simply couldn't get interested and asked her teacher to give her something else to read. Soon she was deeply immersed in the histories of ancient China and Japan.
How did she decide to become a scientist?
Since she enjoyed her studies so much, Kono wanted to continue at the prefectural normal school, but she hadn't yet reached the minimum age to apply. In the end, her father paid a village official to have the date on her birth certificate moved back eight months so that she could take the entrance examination.

At normal school Kono particularly enjoyed math and science. Soon she realized that to do serious research she needed to be able to read original materials in other languages, so she and her friends began studying English on their own. The only school where she could pursue her studies even further was the Women's Higher Normal School (now Ochanomizu University) in Tokyo--in those days (the late 1890s), a three-day journey from her home in Kagawa Prefecture. Nonetheless, when she was accepted into the school's science department, her parents rejoiced for her and gladly agreed to send her to Tokyo.

At the beginning, Kono was interested in psychology, but she decided that in order to study psychology, she first needed to learn biology. As her studies in biology proceeded, she became more and more interested in plants and began to specialize in botanical research.
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