Clara Matsuno

Clara Louise Zitelmann was born and educated in Berlin,^[1] the daughter of Carl Friedrich Zitelmann and Emma Pauline Ulrike Zitelmann.

In 1876,^[2] Matsuno became the first head teacher at the first kindergarten in Japan, with Froebel-inspired methods emphasizing outdoor play, puzzles, songs and games.^[3][4] The school's principal, Shinzo Seki, translated for her, as she did not speak Japanese upon arrival in Japan.^[5] She was also a teacher-training instructor at the Tokyo College of Education for Women from 1876 to 1881. She also taught English and German, and gave piano lessons for the Imperial Household Agency.^[1][6]

Clara Louise Zitelmann married Hazama Matsuno [ja] (松 野 礀) in Ueno in 1876; the couple met in Berlin, where Matsuno was studying forestry.^[1] They were the first German-Japanese couple married in Japan; she became a Japanese citizen by marriage. They had a daughter, Frieda Fumi, who died in 1901, at age 24. Matsuno's husband died in 1908; for a time she lived with her sister and sister-in-law in Japan. She died in Germany in 1931, aged 77 years.

The novel Ein Adoptivkind: Die Geschichte eines Japaners (1916) by Katharina Zitelmann [de] is based in part on Clara Matsuno's life.^[7] In 1976, the Japanese post office released a postage stamp honoring Clara Matsuno on the centennial of her founding the kindergarten program at the Tokyo College of Education for Women. There is a monument honoring Matsuno, with the same image as on the stamp, in the Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo.