Background
Hideko Fukuda was born on 5 October 1865. She was a daughter of a lower ranking samurai of the domain of Bizen in present-day Okayama Prefecture; her family name was Kageyama.
福田 英子
Hideko Fukuda was born on 5 October 1865. She was a daughter of a lower ranking samurai of the domain of Bizen in present-day Okayama Prefecture; her family name was Kageyama.
In 1883 she and her mother opened a school for women, but it was closed the following year on the grounds that it violated the regulations concerning public meetings. She went to Tokyo, where she devoted herself to the popular rights movement, but she became implicated in the Osaka Incident, a scheme by left-wing elements in the Liberal Party to aid the cause of political reform in Korea, and was arrested in Nagasaki.
In 1907 she established a women’s magazine called Sekai Fvjin, in which she reported on the progress of the feminist movement in foreign countries and worked to further the movement in Japan. She also published articles by Abe Isoo and other socialist leaders. To help support herself and her activities, she traveled about selling material for Japanese style clothing, but in 1909 the magazine she had established was banned.
She was a close friend of Ishikawa Sanshiro and frequently participated in the Heiminsha, the socialist organization to which he belonged, gradually becoming a supporter of socialism herself.
In 1882 in Okayama she attended a speech by the feminist leader Kishida Toshiko (Nakajima Shoen) and thereupon determined to take part in the women’s movement.
She worked vigorously to promote and protect the political freedom of women and at the same time played an important role in the movement to better the position of the workers and farmers.
After her release from prison in 1889, she joined Oi Kentaro, another participant in the Osaka Incident, in a lecture tour through the Kansai region, and for a time became his common-law wife. She later separated from him and in 1892 married Fukuda Tomosaku, who died in 1900.