The picturesque hills of Yamate-cho (“The Bluff”) are one of Yokohama’s prime tourist destinations. With sweeping vistas of the harbor far below, they abound with verdant parks and gardens, reconstructed Western-style houses, and a historic cemetery. In the 1860s, there was another attraction: the higher altitude promised relief from the pestilential swampland in the original Foreign Settlement, now Yamashita-cho. Attacks by rogue samurai, coupled with a catastrophic fire in 1866 and outbreaks of malaria, prompted foreign merchants and diplomats to petition the feeble Tokugawa authorities to open a second residential area close to the British and French army camps. The Bluff quickly became the vortex of Western cultural penetration, not only of Yokohama but the rest of Japan, as the new Meiji government encouraged emulation of Britain, Germany, France, and the other powers–even reluctantly relaxing its long persecution of Christianity.
By 1872, thirteen years after Yokohama had opened to world trade, stability and security for the small foreign enclave encouraged its residents to settle down to family life. There were churches, theaters, sports, and clubs–but no schools for their children. French residents pressed one Father Bernard Petitjean to invite Catholic nuns to remedy the situation. He saw the additional opportunity for these sisters to deal with the flood of orphans, the poor, and the sick, thus enhancing the image of Christianity just as it became legal.
The most experienced pioneer of Christian education and social work in the region was Mère Mathilde Raclot (1814–1911), who had built girls’ schools and orphanages throughout Singapore and Malaysia during her two decades in Southeast Asia. Ever since the Sisters of the Infant Jesus (based in Paris on the Rue Saint-Maur) were founded in 1662, their goal had been education for all, rather than evangelism–a mission, but not missionaries. Already 58, Mathilde took on a new challenge and set sail from Singapore to Yokohama for the second half of her career, accompanied by four other French and Irish nuns. Within a decade, three would be dead–but Mathilde carried on until the age of 96.
The school she founded is now Saint Maur International School, celebrating its sesquicentennial this year. After 150 years, it is the oldest international school in Asia and one of the oldest in the world. From the beginning it was ecumenical and multinational, with girls from many faiths, cultures, and languages. French was replaced by English as the language of instruction. Japanese girls were welcomed after extraterritoriality ended in 1899, and the following year the Saint Maur nuns opened an adjacent sister school, now Yokohama Futaba Gakuen and the first of five Futaba schools nationwide, known for educating Empress Masako and Empress Emerita Michiko.
Saint Maur has remained at its original location for 150 years–on the edge of a cliff, both physical and metaphorical. Classes proceeded continuously as the buildings collapsed with one disaster after another: an 1884 typhoon, an 1894 earthquake, and the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, which killed 12 nuns, many students, and scores of orphans. Even as the school and convent were destroyed by U.S. aerial bombing in 1945, education continued at an evacuation site for enemy aliens in Karuizawa.
After Japan’s surrender, classes resumed amid the rubble. In 1947, the shell-shocked French sisters were reinforced by a contingent of vigorous young Irish nuns. They included the 29-year-old Sister Carmel O’Keeffe (1918–2011), who devoted her next 62 years to rebuilding and strengthening Saint Maur. It was Sister Carmel, as Principal from 1967 to 1991, who introduced the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma program–the third school in Japan to adopt it, in 1985. Saint Maur pioneered Montessori education in 1973 and was the first to offer the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE). Saint Maur also began École française de Saint Maur à Yokohama, which offers primary education following the French national curriculum.
Coeducation began in the 1980s and proceeded slowly at first. Now boys make up half of every class, and sports and other activities have expanded accordingly. As nuns aged and retired, lay teachers and administrators took their places. Sister Carmel was succeeded as school head by Jeanette Thomas in 1991 and by Catherine Endo in 2013. They supported ever-higher academic standards, resulting in stellar achievements in fields such as mathematics, natural sciences, Japanese language and literature, and the arts. Today Saint Maur’s graduates enter the top universities on four continents.
Despite these changes, the school atmosphere remained cozy and close-knit, based on a conscious decision to value quality over quantity and never to enroll more than 500 students. Class sizes are small, averaging nine students for each college-level IB seminar in upper grades. Although Saint Maur is the smallest school in the Kanto Plain League, it excels in interscholastic competition, winning both the Speech Contest and Brain Bowl, a major academic contest, in 2021.
Every decade since the 1980s, construction of yet another new school building has demonstrated investment in the future. The renovated Library (1994) features a large collection, high ceilings, and soaring windows. The Fine Arts Center (1998) won architectural awards for its innovative design and professional quality. The Science Center (2011) boasts state-of-the-art facilities. Most recently, the Cougar Café, Activities, and Sports Center (2021) replaced the old Gymnasium (1966) with an up-to-date sports complex and an attractive cafeteria, perched on the edge of the Yamate cliff in an engineering marvel.
For decades, Yamate-cho boasted four international schools. In 1955 Spanish nuns opened Sancta Maria and educated young girls for three decades. A much longer impact was made by Saint Joseph College, opened in 1901 next to Saint Maur. During its 99 years, generations of boys passed through its gates, including Charles Pedersen, the 1987 Nobel Chemistry laureate. Its sad closure in 2000 was a national scandal and may have ended the career of Yokohama’s mayor.
By contrast, Yokohama International School (YIS) opened in 1924 and has expanded into a prominent and successful institution as it approaches its centennial. Among the first schools in the world to use the now-standard appellation “International School,” its campus was a landmark of Yamate-cho until its move in January 2022 to a spacious Honmoku site with a new building designed by Olympic architect Kengo Kuma.
Horizon Japan International School also provides an English-medium education, and there are schools which operate in Chinese, Korean, and German, befitting Japan’s most cosmopolitan city.
Saint Maur remains where it began 150 years ago, the first and last school standing in Yamate. It has grown up but not out. Its history is intertwined with the heritage of Yokohama: it could not have existed anywhere but here.