Riddell Wright Nursing Home for the Aged in Kumamoto

I was born and grew up in Kumamoto. My father was teaching physics at Kumamoto University, so we lived near the university. Just behind the university, there was a nursing home called Riddell Wight Nursing Home. When I was around seven, I asked somebody what Riddell Wright was? That person told me that it was the names of two English women: one is Riddell and the other Wright. I wanted to know more about these English women, but none of the grown-ups knew much about them, at least, so it seemed to me, so I did not ask anything about them any more.

But, their names stayed in the back of my mind all the time, and someday I would like to do some research into them, I thought to myself at that time.
On the premises, there was a house, quite a big house, where children, whose parents were patients with Hansen's disease and lived in the leprosarium in the suburbs of the city of Kumamoto, were accommodated.
I used to visit my classmates living in the house to play with them and other children. Not many children in the neighborhood did go there, but I often went to the house on my way home from school, which was several minutes' walk further away.

In the course of time, I realized that there had been a hospital for the sick before the nursing home was built, and Riddell and Wright were Christian missionaries from England and eventually built the hospital for patients with the disease in 1895.

This is how I got interested in Hansen's disease, patients with the illness, and female missionaries.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• Hansen's disease
• Kumamoto University
• female missionaries
• leprosarium
• Japan