#attraction/park [Shotoku Park](https://maps.app.goo.gl/KJYEfcrsJimEWCGh9) is a park in [[Kusatsu (草津町)]]. > [!NOTE] Mary Helena Cornwall Legh (1857 - 1941) > 1857: Born in Canterbury, UK (May 20) > Early 1870s: Meets G.H. Wilkinson, vicar of St.Peter's, Eaton Square, who awoke her interest in foreign missions > Late 1870s: Learns watercolour painting at National Art Training School, London > 1886: Awarded with the title of L.L.A. (Lady Literate in Arts) by St.Andrews University, Scotland > 1892: Travels round the world with her mother, dropping in Japan > 1894: Her first known book published (to be followed by at least 11 others mostly for children and adolescent girls) > 1907: Bereaved of her mother > > Left alone, Miss Cornwall Legh decided to serve as a missionary. Arriving in Japan toward the end of 1907, she began working in Tokyo and its vicinities as a self-paid missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Then in 1915 she was asked by a young Christian to work for a group of Hansen's disease sufferers at [[Kusatsu (草津町)|Kusatsu]]. In those days, when there was no specific treatment for the disease, its victims were abhorred and excluded from their own communities. Since [[Kusatsu (草津町)|Kusatsu]] was well-known for its generally efficacious hot spring, many such sufferers came to form a colony at [[Kusatsu (草津町)|Kusatsu]], hoping that the hot sulphur spring would do them good. However, hopeless reality often drove them to desperation. Dead bodies were even thrown into the valley and left to decay. > > She bought a piece of land on a low hill at [[Kusatsu (草津町)|Kusatsu]] in 1916 and founded St. Barnabas' Mission. Beginning with St. Barnabas' Church, she set up several homes, a primary school, a kindergarten and a hospital for the sufferers and their families. She not only established these facilities but also supported their management and the people's day-to-day life. Thanks to the medical and spiritual care thus provided, the place which had been called the "Valley of Gehena" was turned into a Christian home. Living a very simple life among the sufferers, she was loved as their "Mother." > > Taking care of all these sufferers required a lot of resources. Though she had inherited a considerable amount of independent means, her private income was not limitless. Therefore she wrote to her friends mostly in England, America and Canada, who supported her with generous gifts of money and supplies. However, the time came when her failing health and old age no longer allowed her to write, and such gifts from abroad ceased to come. > > She was finally obliged to leave [[Kusatsu (草津町)|Kusatsu]] for a warmer place, Akashi, in 1936. In recognition of her services the Japanese government awarded to her the 6th Order of the Sacred Treasure in 1939. She died at Akashi on December 18, 1941, unaware that Japan had entered the war against her mother country. Although having broken diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom, the Japanese government arranged special funeral honours for her. In accordance with her last wish, her ashes were laid to rest in a charnel house of St. Barnabas' Church, [[Kusatsu (草津町)|Kusatsu]]. Her property on the hill was donated to the town of [[Kusatsu (草津町)|Kusatsu]] and was opened to the public as a park in 1943. It is the park where you are now. ![[shotoku park IMG_4369.png]] ![[shotoku park IMG_9174.png]] ![[shotoku park IMG_4386.png]]