Kono Yasui, the First Female Doctor of Science in Japan and Marie Stopes's Visit to Japan

Kono Yasui (1880–1971) graduated from the Women's Higher Normal School in 1902. She became assistant professor in 1907. In order to earn a doctorate degree, she had to go abroad for further studies. In 1914 she went to the US for two years, where she began research on fossil plants in coal. Supported by Kenjiro Fujii (1866–1952), professor of botany at the Tokyo Imperial University, on her return she was able to continue this research in Japan for 10 years, collecting coal samples from various places in Japan and China. In 1928, Yasui became the first woman to obtain a science doctorate with her thesis “Botanical Study on Coals Produced in Japan”. Her path had apparently been paved by British palaeobotanist Marie Stopes (1880–1958), who was awarded a PhD in palaeobotany in 1904 in Germany. Stopes met Associate Professor Fujii in Germany, where they became secretly engaged. Stopes followed Fujii to Japan in 1907, exploring coal mines on the island of Hokkaido for fossil plants. For the Japanese scientific community, she came as a shock-as a female palaeontologist, in possession of a doctorate degree and even doing research underground in coal mines. Possibly, it was Stopes' example that led to Fujii supporting Yasui's research and allowing her to pursue a doctorate degree.