Tsuneko Kondo-Kavese

Tsuneko Kondo-Kavese (近藤恒子, Kondō Tsuneko, 1 March 1893–25 January 1963) was a Japanese and Slovenian nurse who was active in the Red Cross in Yugoslavia.

Life and work

Kondo-Kavese Tsuneko was born in Gifu, Japan, a daughter of court architect Kondo-Kavese Kagijiro. After the Russo-Japanese War, she relocated with her family to Beijing, where she studied medicine, though she did not graduate. In the International Club, she met Ivan Skušek, a Slovenian naval officer, who was stationed aboard an Austro-Hungarian battleship. She married him in 1920 and returned with him to Ljubljana, where she soon learned Slovenian. She served as head nurse for the Red Cross and became an active council member. She received the Red Cross' highest award in 1962. She also promoted cultural exchange between Japan and Yugoslavia. Between 1930 and 1960 she held a series of lectures on Japan, first in German and later in Slovenian, which were published in various newspapers. She also lectured on Japan on the then newly established Radio Ljubljana. She died on January 25, 1963. She is buried at the Žale cemetery in central Ljubljana.

When she arrived to Ljubljana in 1920, she had with her a collection of over 500 pieces of Chinese and Japanese artwork, which she bequeathed to the Slovene Ethnographic Museum in 1963.