Her father was a prison guard who also mended umbrellas; her older brother Handa Hisao was a military physician and helped support the family.

She studied Chinese literature, weaving, and English as a girl, and was baptised as a Christian at age 16, then trained to be a teacher at a school in Fukuoka.

[1] She attended Doshisha Women's College in Kyoto, and Mary Florence Denton, an American faculty member there, encouraged Handa to seek further studies abroad.

[8] In 1955, after Christie had died and Cowden Castle was demolished, the Japanese Garden was closed to public visits; in time, it was vandalised and fell into ruin.

She retired from teaching in 1919, and was in charge of a family orchard at Mizusawa beginning in the 1920s, until 1932, when she left the operation in her stepson's care.