HIRATSUKA, Raicho (ed.).

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Seito ("Bluestocking"). An issue of this formative influence on the development of Japanese feminism. Seito was founded in 1911 by five female political activists led by Hiratsuka Raicho (1886-1971) and was later led by Ito Noe, a notable anarcha-feminist who was murdered by military police in 1923. There are no original copies listed on WorldCat in Western institutions.Hiratsuka was a writer, journalist, and political activist who first advocated for a women's spiritual revolution before shifting her writings to focus on gender equality and social problems. She opened the first issue with the words "In the beginning, a woman was the Sun", referring to the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu. Over the following five years, many notable Japanese feminists contributed to the magazine, including the poet Akiko Yosano, the future socialist politician Ichiko Kamichika, and the writer Otake Kazue (known as Kokichi). Seito's contents ranged from poetry to literary translations and social criticism, the latter of which caused it to be banned by the Japanese Home Ministry in 1916. At its height it was selling approximately 3,000 copies a month.The 1912 issues were heavily focused on translations of foreign feminist literature. This example features partial translations of Anton Chekhov's Ivanov, Stanley Victor Makower's The Mirror of Music, Anatole France's Sur la Pierre Blanche, and Ellen Key's Kärleken och Äktenskapet ("Love and Marriage"). Key was a particularly strong influence on Hira

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