It was soon after the visit by His Excellency, Prince Takamatsunomiya, in April of 1930(Shōwa 5), that we received official permission to establish the women’s technical college. However, the Sugiyama Educational Corporation was given permission a year earlier than we were even though we had applied concurrently. So, our college was the third founded in Aichi.

If this women’s technical college were given a permit, I thought that they should also be awarded the certificate of secondary school sewing course teacher without being subject to examination. But the students would be required to pass the national examination conducted by the ministry.

It was May of 1932(Shōwa 7) when students took the first provisional certification exam, but having received bad scores, they all failed. In this school, if the students failed the exam once, they had to wait three years before taking it again. In 1934(Shōwa 9), they re-took the exam and, failed as before. They tried four times, but the only thing they achieved was a growing mountain of failures.

In April 1936(Shōwa 11), three graduates of Hamamatsu Girls’ Higher School enrolled in our school. I recommended that they take the national examination to qualify for the sewing course license. So I started giving special lessons to these students. Then in October, during their second year, all of them passed the preliminary examination. The final examination was to be held in December at Tokyo Women’s Higher Normal School, so I took all three of them to Tokyo and stayed the night there with them. Each test day, I sent them to sit the examination.

Thanks to a strong effort, two of them passed the examination with the third achieving her goal in December of her senior year.

It was May 1941(Shōwa 16) when my second son Seiki got married to Yoshiko. She played a pivotal role in preparations for the entrance examinations. Yoshiko, favorite pupil of the then current supervisor of the Ministry of Education, Mr. Jun Narita, worked as a teacher at Ichinomiya Girls’ Higher School after her graduation from Tokyo Women’s Higher Normal School.

In March of 1942(Shōwa 17), six third grade students were encouraged to take the national examination. The exam supervisor made a special trip from Nara Women’s Higher Normal School, and, remarkably, all the students passed and received secondary school teaching certificates. It came as quite a relief.