Free Living Activist who Fought for Emancipation of Women

HIRATSUKA Raichou

"Once upon a time women were in fact the sun. Indeed, true human being. But now a woman is the moon, like a sick person with a pale face, who lives depending on others and whose life is brightened up by others. We have to bring back our sun that had been hidden …" So said HIRATSUKA Raichou (1886~1971), chief of a literature-focused magazine called "Seitou" that was published in 1911 exclusively by women, as she proudly declared the emancipation of women in the foreword of the first issue. At that time she was 24 years old.

The first issues of "Seitou" sold out immediately, which had a big impact on the women of the time. This became the starting point for the women’s emancipation movement that awakened women to fight for independence, and insist on opposing the feudal family system and gaining voting and other rights for women. Furthermore, they advocated a style of love that encompassed individual choice over arranged relationships in a time when women used to be subordinate to men in a family structure dominated by fathers.

Three and a half years before publishing the first issue of their magazine, Raichou attempted a double suicide at Shiobara hot spring in Tochigi prefecture with her partner MORITA Souhei, who had great respect for his master and famous novelist NATSUME Souseki. The scandal caused by the elite couple, one of whom had graduated from Tokyo Imperial University (now Tokyo University) and the other from Japan Women’s University, caused a big stir in Japan. It could be said that Raichou herself had practiced the style of love advocated in the magazine.

Living together, being an unmarried mother and ...
In 1914, at the age of 27, Raichou fell in love with a student painter called OKUMURA Hirofumi who was 5 years younger than her, and they began to live together. Although it was a de facto relationship, she intentionally did not follow the proper marriage procedure, which resulted in her being criticized because her relationship challenged the marriage institution. The relationship caused a ripple among the women in the "Seitou" group. Therefore Okumura left and Raichou brought up their two children as an unmarried mother.

Nevertheless, their love did not fade, and some years later they formally married. Although Raichou had had her own way throughout much of her life, she stated that "a mother is a source of life and exists as a part of the state, therefore, her child is not her own, but belongs to society and the state." But her argument made poetess YOSANO Akiko along with others criticize her by insisting that a child belongs to its parents, and that both a woman and a mother can gain independence by acquiring economic power.

In 1920, Raichou organized "The New Women’s Association," the first women's movement in Japan, with ICHIKAWA Fusae and others. Through their petitition to revise the law, the group successfully won the rights for women to participate in political meetings, an action that at the time was banned by law. In 1953, Raichou was inaugurated as president of the Japan Women’s Group Union. Raichou, who spoke enthusiastically about how "a new woman never lives in the past," left behind enormous achievements that have improved the position of Japanese women today. Her real name was OKUMURA Haru. She died at the age of 85.

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