On Thursday 17th March 2011, North West Kent College at Dartford welcomed a delegation from the Japan Women’s College of Physical Education. Two Japanese researchers visited the Bergman Österberg Union Archive which is located in Kingsfield House, the present headquarters of North West Kent College. Now known by the College more prosaically as K block, Kingsfield was originally a ‘gentleman’s residence’ owned by Edward Satterthwaite. In 1895, Madame Bergman Österberg bought the house and transferred her Physical Training College from Broadhurst Gardens, Hampstead, to the Oakfield Lane mansion. Madame Bergman Österberg's college thrived and by 1913 her reputation had spread as far as Japan. Its government decided to send Miss Tokuyo Nikaido to England to study the latest theories and methods of physical education under the guidance of Madame Bergman Österberg. On returning to Japan Miss Nikaido established, in 1922, Nikaido Taiso Juku, the first teacher training school of physical education for women and the forerunner of the Japan Women’s College of Physical Education. The Japanese visitors, Shigeyo Murayama and Professor Ritsuko Kataoka met Anne Stuart, chairman of the Bergman Österberg Union and her colleagues: Pat Chatters; Alan Gamwell; Rosemary Moon; and Gwen Seabrook-Smith. The visitors spent time in the BÖU Archive, looking at photographs from 1913 and were shown the house and grounds where Miss Nikaido had lived and studied.
