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Hiratsuka Raichō

Hiratsuka Raichō
Raichō, from her autobiography
Native name	平塚らいちょう
Born	Hiratsuka Haru February 10, 1886
Died	May 24, 1971
Occupation	Editor
Nationality	Japanese
Alma mater	Japan Women's University
Spouse	Okumura Hiroshi

Hiratsuka Raichō (平塚 らいちょう), transliterated らいてう according to the historical kana orthography,(February 10, 1886 – May 24, 1971) was a writer, journalist, political activist, anarchist, and pioneering Japanese feminist. She graduated from the Japan Women's University, and in 2005 the university created the Raichō Hiratsuka Prize. Her formation of the journal Seitō (青鞜, Bluestocking) inspired feminist across Japan and the introduction of the first issue, “In the beginning, woman was the sun” (「元始、女性は太陽であった」), became a symbol to the women's rights movement.

Hiratsuka is especially known as a key women's rights activist who strove to achieve women's rights and women's suffrage during the Taishō and Shōwa periods. During the post-war period Hiratsuka actively participated in the anti-war and peace movements.

Hiratsuka's formation of the New Women's Association, together with Ichikawa Fusae and Mumeo Oku, was pivotal in overturning Article 5, allowing women to join political organizations and hold meetings, as well as bringing attention to the issue of women's suffrage in Japan.

Early life

Born Hiratsuka Haru (平塚 明 Hiratsuka Haru) in Tokyo in 1886, the second daughter of a high ranking civil servant, she enjoyed an upper-class upbringing. Beginning her collegiate educated at Japan Women's University (日本女子大学) in 1903, Hiratsuka came to be influenced by contemporary currents of European philosophy, as well as Zen Buddhism, of which she would become a devoted practitioner. Of particular influence to her was turn-of-the-century Swedish feminist writer Ellen Key, some of whose works she translated into Japanese, and who's ideas on the difference between "soul life" and "family life" helped shape her own opinions on the relationship of the different aspects of a woman's life. As well as the the individualistic heroine, Nora, of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879), who she criticized for her lack of foresight before ending her marriage. In 1908 she attempted a double-suicide with Morita Sōhei, her teacher and a disciple of novelist Natsume Soseki, in the mountains of Nasushiobara, Tochigi. The pair were found alive on the mountain, but the attempted suicide by such a highly educated pair aroused widespread public criticism.

Seitō

Upon graduation from university, Hiratsuka entered the Narumi Women's English School where, in 1911, she founded Japan's first all-women literary magazine, Seitō (青鞜, literally Bluestocking) with the financial backing of her mother. She began the first issue with the words, “In the beginning, woman was the sun” (「元始、女性は太陽であった」) – believed to be a reference to the Shinto goddess Amaterasu, and to the spiritual independence which women had lost. Adopting the pen name “Raichō” (“Thunderbird”), she began to call for a women’s spiritual revolution, and within its first few years the journal’s focus shifted from literature to women’s issues. While Seitō followed in the steps of other female focused journals including, Meiroku Zasshi (明六雑誌 "Meiroku Journal") (Meiji six, 1874-1875) and Jogaku zasshi (女学雑誌) (Women's education, 1885-1904), it was divergent in that it was the first journal to challenge state and socially held beliefs of the role of women. Seitō provided a platform for pioneering feminist thinkers such as Hiratsuka and Itō Noe to discuss topics ranging from reproduction, to motherhood and sexuality. Contributors included renowned poet and women’s rights proponent Yosano Akiko, as well as the famous author Yoshiya Nobuko.

Exaggerated stories of their love affairs and nonconformism, spread by Japan's mainstream press, turned public opinion against the magazine and prompted Raichō to publish several fierce defenses of her ideals. Her April 1913 essay "To the Women of the World" (「世の婦人たちに」) rejected the conventional role of women as ryōsai kenbo (良妻賢母, Good wife and wise mother): "I wonder how many women have, for the sake of financial security in their lives, entered into loveless marriages to become one man’s lifelong servant and prostitute." This nonconformism pitted Seitō not only against the society but the state, contributing to the censorship of women's magazines that "disturbed public order" or introduced "Western ideas about women" incompatible with Japan.

The journal folded in 1915, but not before establishing its founder as a leading light in Japan’s women's movement. Meanwhile, in 1914, Hiratsuka began living openly with her younger lover, artist Okumura Hiroshi, with whom she had two children out of wedlock. The two eventually married in 1941.

Raichō in 1955

New Women's Association

In 1920, following an investigation into female workers' conditions in textile factories in Nagoya which further galvanized her political resolve, Hiratsuka founded the New Women's Association (新婦人協会, Shin-fujin kyokai) together with fellow women's rights activist Ichikawa Fusae. It was largely through this group's efforts that the Article 5 of the Police Security Regulations—which, enacted in 1900, had barred women from joining political organizations and holding or attending political meetings—was overturned in 1922. Women's suffrage, however, remained elusive in Japan. A further and more controversial campaign attempted to ban men with venereal disease from marrying. This unsuccessful campaign remains a point of controversy surrounding Hiratsuka’s career in that it saw her aligned herself with the eugenics movement, asserting that the spread of V.D. was having a detrimental effect on the Japanese “race.”

Postwar

The next couple of decades saw Hiratsuka withdraw somewhat from the public eye, saddled with debts and her lover beset with health problems, although she would continue to write and lecture. In the postwar years, however, she emerged again as a public figure through the peace movement. In 1950, the day after the outbreak of the Korean War, she traveled to the United States together with writer and activist Nogami Yaeko and three other members of the Japan Women's Movement (婦人運動家) in order to present US Secretary of State Dean Acheson with a request that a system be created in which Japan could remain neutral and pacifist. Hiratsuka continued to champion women's rights in the postwar era, founding the New Japan Women's Association (新日本婦人の会) in 1963 together with Nogami and noted artist Iwasaki Chihiro, and continuing to write and lecture up until her death in 1971.

Legacy

While her career as a political activist covered many decades, Hiratsuka is primarily remembered for her stewardship of the Seitō group. As a leading light of the women's movement in early twentieth century Japan, she was a highly influential figure whose devotees ranged from pioneering Korean feminist author Na Hye-sok (나혜석; 羅蕙錫) who was a student in Tokyo during Seitō's heyday to anarchist and social critic Itō Noe whose membership in the Seitō organization generated some controversy. Her postwar organization, the New Japan Women's Organization, remains active to this day.

Selected works

Original works

• 『円窓より』 (Marumado yori, The View from the Round Window)
• 『元始、女性は太陽であった』 (Genshi, josei wa taiyō de atta, In The Beginning Woman Was The Sun)
• 『私の歩いた道』 (Watakushi no aruita michi, The Road I Walked)

Translations

• Ellen Karolina Key, The Renaissance of Motherhood (『母性の復興』, Bosei no fukkō)
• Ellen Karolina Key, Love and Marriage (『愛と結婚』, Ai to kekkon)
• Teruko Craig, In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun – The Autobiography of a Japanese Feminist(『元始、女性は太陽であった』, Genshi, josei wa taiyō de atta)

See also

• Bluestocking Journal (Seitō)
• Blue Stockings Society (Seitō-sha)
• Feminism
• Fusae Ichikawa
• Ellen Key
• Akiko Yosano
• Timeline of women's suffrage
• Timeline of women's rights (other than voting)
• Women's suffrage in Japan

External links

• Raicho Hiratsuka
• New Japan Women’s Association