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In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun: The Autobiography of a Japanese Feminist
"In the beginning, woman was truly the sun. An authentic person. Now she is the moon, a wan and sickly moon, dependent on another, reflecting another's brilliance."-Hiratsuku Raicho
Raicho Hiratsuka (1886-1971) was the most influential figure in the early women's movement in Japan. In 1911, she founded Bluestocking ( Seito ), Japan's first literary journal run by women. In 1920, she founded the New Women's Association, Japan's first nationwide women's organization to campaign for female suffrage, and soon after World War II, the Japan Federation of Women's Organizations.
Available for the first time in English, In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun is Raicho Hiratsuka's autobiography of her childhood, early youth, and subsequent rebellion against the strict social codes of the time. Hiratsuka came from an upper-middle class Tokyo family, and her restless quest for truth led her to read widely in philosophy and undertake Zen training at Japan Woman's College. After graduation, she gained brief notoriety for her affair with a married writer, but quickly established herself as a brilliant and articulate leader of feminist causes with the launch of the journal Seito . Her richly detailed account presents a woman who was at once idealistic and elitist, fearless and vain, and a perceptive observer of society.
Teruko Craig's translation captures Hiratsuka's strong personality and distinct voice. At a time when interest in Japanese feminism is growing in the West, there is no finer introduction to Japanese women's history than this intimate, candid, and compelling memoir.
Raicho Hiratsuka (1886-1971) was the most influential figure in the early women's movement in Japan. In 1911, she founded Bluestocking ( Seito ), Japan's first literary journal run by women. In 1920, she founded the New Women's Association, Japan's first nationwide women's organization to campaign for female suffrage, and soon after World War II, the Japan Federation of Women's Organizations.
Available for the first time in English, In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun is Raicho Hiratsuka's autobiography of her childhood, early youth, and subsequent rebellion against the strict social codes of the time. Hiratsuka came from an upper-middle class Tokyo family, and her restless quest for truth led her to read widely in philosophy and undertake Zen training at Japan Woman's College. After graduation, she gained brief notoriety for her affair with a married writer, but quickly established herself as a brilliant and articulate leader of feminist causes with the launch of the journal Seito . Her richly detailed account presents a woman who was at once idealistic and elitist, fearless and vain, and a perceptive observer of society.
Teruko Craig's translation captures Hiratsuka's strong personality and distinct voice. At a time when interest in Japanese feminism is growing in the West, there is no finer introduction to Japanese women's history than this intimate, candid, and compelling memoir.
432 pages, Paperback
First published September 22, 2006
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676 people want to read
About the author
Raicho Hiratsuka
4 books6 followersRaichō Hiratsuka (平塚 らいてう Hiratsuka Raichō, February 10, 1886 – May 24, 1971) was a writer, journalist, political activist, anarchist and pioneering Japanese feminist.
Born Haru Hiratsuka (平塚 明 Hiratsuka Haru) in Tokyo in 1886, the second daughter of a high ranking civil servant, and 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 the individualistic heroine of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879).
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, lit. Bluestocking). 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」) – 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, including candid discussion of female sexuality, chastity and abortion. Contributors included renowned poet and women’s rights proponent Yosano Akiko, among others.
Exaggerated stories of their love affairs and nonconformism, spread by Japan's mainstream press, turned public opinion against the magazine and prompted Raicho 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 and eventually married in 1941.
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) 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.”
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
Born Haru Hiratsuka (平塚 明 Hiratsuka Haru) in Tokyo in 1886, the second daughter of a high ranking civil servant, and 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 the individualistic heroine of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879).
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, lit. Bluestocking). 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」) – 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, including candid discussion of female sexuality, chastity and abortion. Contributors included renowned poet and women’s rights proponent Yosano Akiko, among others.
Exaggerated stories of their love affairs and nonconformism, spread by Japan's mainstream press, turned public opinion against the magazine and prompted Raicho 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 and eventually married in 1941.
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) 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.”
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
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 26, 2025
Not only does Hiratsuka-san portrays the life of women in Meiji/Taishō Japan, she also lists numerous acquaintances that in some way or another were connected to Seitō magazine and were active in political and artistic life of the time. It's a shame though that most of the author's post-Seitō activity is only briefly summarised in the translator's afterword.
May 31, 2015
My review, originally published in Monumenta Nipponica 62.3 (2007): 369-371, is available here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25066524.
May 14, 2025
Intéressante autobiographie de la fondatrice de Seitō (bas bleu), la première revue littéraire japonaise produite, écrite et dirigée par des femmes (peu de temps après sa création, on pourra aussi lui accoler l'étiquette de revue féministe).
Si les récits de son enfance, de ses jeunes amitiés et de sa famille ne m'ont pas trop intéressé, le récit de la création de la revue, des articles, de l'écriture, de sa propre venue au féminisme, des femmes qui travaillaient pour la revue, etc. était excessivement intéressant. J'ai été particulièrement intéressé par la description qu'Hiratsuka a fait d'Otake Kokichi que je ne connaissais pas (et dont il ne semble avoir aucune traduction de ses œuvres en français ou en anglais :( ).
Il y a aussi deux autres éléments assez intéressants et singuliers dans ce livre. Je crois que c'est la première fois que je lis un récit d'une personne qui a intégré un peu la pire idée du suicide romantique et qui ne parvient pas à bout de son action à cause de son partenaire qui change d'idée à la dernière minute. On a donc un témoignage assez unique des pensées qui justifiait cette tentative "singulière" et de l'influence de certaines idées et livres sur son psyché (j'ai l'impression que sa lecture de Les Souffrances du jeune Werther pourrait y être pour quelque chose).
Le second éléments assez unique du livre est la possible asexualité de l'autrice selon ses propres réflexions, dires et dialogues avec d'autres personnes (surtout des hommes), du moins, jusqu'à un certain âge. Je dis jusqu'à un certain âge parce cette biographie n'est que la moitié de la biographie complète d'Hiratsuka et s'arrête après la fin de la revue Seitō, il y a toutefois une note du traducteur qui résume en une dizaine de pages le restant de sa vie donc on ne connaît pas trop son avis sur la sexualité après et elle n'y revient pas souvent. Ses écrits sur la sexualité et sa perception du sexe dans cette biographie semble toutefois vraiment relever de l'expérience asexuelle et en constituerait certainement un des premiers témoignages écrits sur le sujet, sans mention du mot, mais il n'était clairement pas diffusé dans les années '70, date de l'édition traduite, cette partie de l'autobiographie a été écrite bien avant toutefois).
C'est aussi intéressant à plein d'autres égards: pour entendre parler de l'émergence du féminisme et de la New Woman au Japon, pour entendre parler de la création de la revue littéraire féministe Seitō et des cercles de femmes qui y ont contribués, pour en lire sur la condition des femmes au Japon de la fin du XIXe siècle à la seconde guerre mondiale et des restrictions, des stricts attentes sociales et familiales et de la maternité. On y trouve aussi des réflexions intéressantes sur les livres qu'elle a lu, les gens certainement haut en couleur qu'elle a côtoyés, mais aussi de nombreuses réflexions sur le zen.
Si les récits de son enfance, de ses jeunes amitiés et de sa famille ne m'ont pas trop intéressé, le récit de la création de la revue, des articles, de l'écriture, de sa propre venue au féminisme, des femmes qui travaillaient pour la revue, etc. était excessivement intéressant. J'ai été particulièrement intéressé par la description qu'Hiratsuka a fait d'Otake Kokichi que je ne connaissais pas (et dont il ne semble avoir aucune traduction de ses œuvres en français ou en anglais :( ).
Il y a aussi deux autres éléments assez intéressants et singuliers dans ce livre. Je crois que c'est la première fois que je lis un récit d'une personne qui a intégré un peu la pire idée du suicide romantique et qui ne parvient pas à bout de son action à cause de son partenaire qui change d'idée à la dernière minute. On a donc un témoignage assez unique des pensées qui justifiait cette tentative "singulière" et de l'influence de certaines idées et livres sur son psyché (j'ai l'impression que sa lecture de Les Souffrances du jeune Werther pourrait y être pour quelque chose).
Le second éléments assez unique du livre est la possible asexualité de l'autrice selon ses propres réflexions, dires et dialogues avec d'autres personnes (surtout des hommes), du moins, jusqu'à un certain âge. Je dis jusqu'à un certain âge parce cette biographie n'est que la moitié de la biographie complète d'Hiratsuka et s'arrête après la fin de la revue Seitō, il y a toutefois une note du traducteur qui résume en une dizaine de pages le restant de sa vie donc on ne connaît pas trop son avis sur la sexualité après et elle n'y revient pas souvent. Ses écrits sur la sexualité et sa perception du sexe dans cette biographie semble toutefois vraiment relever de l'expérience asexuelle et en constituerait certainement un des premiers témoignages écrits sur le sujet, sans mention du mot, mais il n'était clairement pas diffusé dans les années '70, date de l'édition traduite, cette partie de l'autobiographie a été écrite bien avant toutefois).
C'est aussi intéressant à plein d'autres égards: pour entendre parler de l'émergence du féminisme et de la New Woman au Japon, pour entendre parler de la création de la revue littéraire féministe Seitō et des cercles de femmes qui y ont contribués, pour en lire sur la condition des femmes au Japon de la fin du XIXe siècle à la seconde guerre mondiale et des restrictions, des stricts attentes sociales et familiales et de la maternité. On y trouve aussi des réflexions intéressantes sur les livres qu'elle a lu, les gens certainement haut en couleur qu'elle a côtoyés, mais aussi de nombreuses réflexions sur le zen.
Want to read
September 7, 2018Intrigued by this book by this comic by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
https://aaww.org/raicho-hiratsuka-beg...
https://aaww.org/raicho-hiratsuka-beg...
September 20, 2024
I am reading this book not for the feminism but to study Raicho's Zen practice. She has a strong Rinzai Zen practice and it is unlikely that she would have accomplished as much or have done it as calmly without practicing Zazen. So while she was naturally observant, Zazen shaped her character into a strong woman.
Hiratsuka observes a wide range of Japanese life from the mid Meiji era, turn of the century to the mid 60s Showa era.. She notes her father becoming solidified as a government bureaucrat. She tells us of the differences between her grandmothers. One is down to earth carefree and the other is meticulously bound to the rigid Japanese culture.
I am only a third the way through the book, so I am not sure if she considered her work to be feminism. She wrote about what she considered important issues of their times. Hiratsuka's life changed drastically or dramatically when she went on an overnight trip with a male friend. And even though nothing sexual happened her reputation was damaged beyond repair. Her being so observant of Japanese culture, it is hard to believe that she was so naive to not know the consequences of the trip. Perhaps she was burning her bridges to force herself down a certain path. Raicho's meditation practice gave her the strength to not care about what other people thought.
One of Hiratsuka's studies is literature. I found it interesting that some of her fellow students identified with characters of the books and one male friend came close to killing her using a method found in a novel.
Full disclosure: I am an older male. So what interests me about the book may be entirely different from what other readers find.
Finally, I doubt Raich Hiratsuka thought she was writing an autobiography as her writing is so matter of fact. So Zen. I wonder if she had read Thoreau sentence from Walden: "I went to the woods so that I might live deliberately, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not when it came time to die discover I had not lived."
Raicho lived life deliberately and learned what it had to teach and now she is teaching us.
It is a very good book. I highly recommend it.
Hiratsuka observes a wide range of Japanese life from the mid Meiji era, turn of the century to the mid 60s Showa era.. She notes her father becoming solidified as a government bureaucrat. She tells us of the differences between her grandmothers. One is down to earth carefree and the other is meticulously bound to the rigid Japanese culture.
I am only a third the way through the book, so I am not sure if she considered her work to be feminism. She wrote about what she considered important issues of their times. Hiratsuka's life changed drastically or dramatically when she went on an overnight trip with a male friend. And even though nothing sexual happened her reputation was damaged beyond repair. Her being so observant of Japanese culture, it is hard to believe that she was so naive to not know the consequences of the trip. Perhaps she was burning her bridges to force herself down a certain path. Raicho's meditation practice gave her the strength to not care about what other people thought.
One of Hiratsuka's studies is literature. I found it interesting that some of her fellow students identified with characters of the books and one male friend came close to killing her using a method found in a novel.
Full disclosure: I am an older male. So what interests me about the book may be entirely different from what other readers find.
Finally, I doubt Raich Hiratsuka thought she was writing an autobiography as her writing is so matter of fact. So Zen. I wonder if she had read Thoreau sentence from Walden: "I went to the woods so that I might live deliberately, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not when it came time to die discover I had not lived."
Raicho lived life deliberately and learned what it had to teach and now she is teaching us.
It is a very good book. I highly recommend it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 10, 2020
Fantastic historical account of feminism in Japanese culture at the turn of the 20th century.
January 7, 2024
wrote my bachelor thesis on the subject of feminism in japan and raichō hiratsuka’s work was my main source. so grateful to learn about her life and her impact.
February 23, 2017
Really interesting book about one of the creators of Japan's first feminist magazine. Narrative ends in 1917.
Interesting tho how you find the evil jealous gay trope everywhere though (this narrative actually has two minor evil jealous gays - one female and one male).
Interesting tho how you find the evil jealous gay trope everywhere though (this narrative actually has two minor evil jealous gays - one female and one male).
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews