Tei Ninomiya (born 1887) was a Japanese educator. She was the first Asian student at Smith College. A residence hall on campus, Ninomiya House, is now named for her.
Ninomiya was born in Matsuyama, the daughter of Kunijiro Ninomiya, a Japanese Congregational minister and schoolmaster.[1][2] She sailed from Yokohama to Seattle in 1903 with a group of other Japanese women students, and graduated from Smith College in 1910. She is recognized as the school's first Asian student.[3] While she was at Smith, she spoke about Japanese women's lives, often dressed in a kimono,[4] to women's groups and church audiences in New England.[5][6][7] She wrote an essay, "The Condition of Japanese Women" (1907), for the Smith College Monthly.[8]
Ninomiya was a teacher in Japan, and a Red Cross worker. She was also secretary of the YWCA in Yokohama in 1912,[9][10] until she married in 1913 and was replaced by American Molly Baker.[11] She was a member of the national committee of the YWCA in Japan,[12][13] working with Michi Kawai, a Bryn Mawr College alumna.[14][15]
In December 1913, Ninomiya married Japanese lawyer and bureaucrat Unjiro Fujita [ja].[12] They had multiple children: Meiko (born 1914) and Atsuo (born 1916);[16] and they had two young sons when Smith alumna Stella Tuthill visited them in Kobe early in the 1920s.[17] The Fujitas moved to Port Arthur in Manchuria later in 1922.[18] She had a son and two daughters when she wrote to the Smith College alumnae from Hiroshima in 1930.[19]
In 2010, the president of Smith College, Carol T. Christ, toured six Asian cities; the timing of her trip coincided with the centenary of Ninomiya's graduation from Smith.[20] Smith College dedicated Ninomiya House in 2016, a campus residence named in her memory.[21] There is a plaque on the building's exterior, explaining her significance in the school's history.[15]