Setsuko Hani

Hani Setsuko was born in Tokyo, the daughter of journalists Yoshikazu Hani [ja] and Hani Motoko. She was educated at the school her parents founded, Jiyu Gakuen.^[1][2]

Hani was a reporter and teacher as a young woman. In the 1930s she ran a school for Japanese children in Beijing. She was one of the founders of the Women's Democratic Club (Fujin minshū kurabu) in March 1946,^[3] and joined Shidzue Kato, Yoko Matsuoka (who was also Hani's cousin), and other feminists in presenting a statement to General Douglas Macarthur on women's rights in post-war Japan.^[4] As a "child welfare expert", she expressed concern for the children born to Western fathers and Japanese women during the post-war occupation.^[5] In 1955 she was one of Japan's five representatives at the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) meeting in Geneva.^[6]

• "The Japanese Family System" (1948, published by the Japan Institute of Pacific Studies)^[7][8]
• Bonza and the Little Novice (1956)
• Shiiburuto no Musumetachi (Siebold's Daughters)^[9]
• Tsuma no kokoro (1979, A Wife's Heart)

Hani married historian Goro Hani [ja]; their son was film director Susumu Hani (born 1928),^[2] and their daughter was music educator and translator Kyoko Hani [ja](1929–2015). Her husband died in 1983, and she died in 1987, at the age of 84.