“At 48 Bluff, where a mission home was located, missionary Miss Brittan opened Brittan Jo Gakko in October 1880. In 1881, it moved to 68 Bluff and then to 120-A Bluff in 1883 when the school had become coeducational.

“In 1886, the boy’s section became Yokohama Eiwa Gakko and remained at the same place [while] the girl’s section moved to 84 Yokohama settlement, which was temporarily loaned, and became Yokohama Eiwa Jo Gakko.

“In 1889, school buildings of the girl’s section were newly built in 244 Bluff and Yokohama Eiwa Jo Gakko relocated there. A final move to Maita-machi, in Naka Ward, occurred in 1903.”

– Yokohama-Yamate Bluff Story, Urban Design Office, Yokohama, 1992

Eiwa Jo Gakko student dormitory, Yokohama, c. 1920. The school was founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1880 under the auspices of the Womens Foreign Missonary Society.

“When the first mission schools were established in Japan many of them were named Eiwa which is written with two Chinese characters, 英和, the first meaning English and the second meaning Japanese.

“Both our schools, the one for boys, which is at Nagova, and the one for girls in Yokohama were called Eiwa. To the Yokohama one was added Jo, meaning ‘girl’. I presume this name was meant to signify that the schools taught both English and Japanese and also that they represented cooperation between the English speaking lands and Japan. However, that [caused confusion] between the two schools with letters meant for one school being delivered to the other.

“… Because of these reasons and others the Nagoya school long ago was re-named Nagoya Chu Gakko or ‘Nagoya Middle School’. Many of us have learned to love the Yokohama school as Eiwa and, for sentimental reasons, we hate to lose that name. However, now that the school is to be reorganized under an officially recognized charter, and is to have a new principal, a Japanese, it has been decided to give it a new name.

“To tell of all the councils that have been held to decide on the name would take all day but at last a name has been chosen that we think is suitable and distinctive, so, as soon as the proper amount of red tape can be unwound Eiwa Jo Gakko will pass into history and instead we will have Seibi Gakuen [‘beautiful star academy’].”

– Methodist Protestant Herald, August 18, 1938