Yamakawa Kikue was an essayist, activist, and socialist feminist who contributed to the development of feminism in modern Japan. The first head of the Women's and Minors' Bureau of the Ministry of Labor. She is also known for being one of the founding members of the socialist group Sekirankai (Red Wave Society).
Background
Yamakawa Kikue was born on November 3, 1890 in a progressive-minded samurai family from Tokyo, Japan. Her father Morita Ryunosuke, was born to the family of samurai of the lowest rank in the Matsue Domain (present Matsue City, Shimane Prefecture) and worked as an interpreter in the army, and later he managed a meat business. Her mother, Morita Chiyo, was the daughter of Aoyama Enju who was a Confucian scholar in the Mito Domain. Chiyo had a passion for learning and graduated from Tokyo Women's Higher Nomar School (present Ochanomizu University) as a first-generation student of the school. Yamakawa Kikue had an older sister (Matsue), brother (Toshio), and younger sister (Shizue).
Education
In 1908, Yamakawa Kikue attended the private women's college Joshi Eigaku Juku (present Tsuda Juku University) in Tokyo. According to one of her teachers, she almost failed college because when she took the entrance exam, she wrote a resolution that she would work for the liberation of women.
In the first year of the college, Yamakawa Kikue visited a spinning mill factory with her Christian acquaintances and was shocked to see female workers work in terrible working conditions. When she heard Christian lecturers worship the work there, she was outraged about the lecture because she did not understand the idea that people still should appreciate work even if they work in the terrible conditions. This experience made her realize that religion could not solve the factory women's poor lives, women's issues, and social problems.
This experience fueled her future course of action and awakened her to socialism and social science. After her graduation in 1912, Yamakawa worked in a publishing company as a part-time worker, engaging in making an English dictionary and translation.
Career
After her graduation in 1912, Yamakawa worked in a publishing company as a part-time worker, engaging in making an English dictionary and translation. In 1920 Yamakawa Kikue joined Sekirankai (Socialist Party) and helped her husband Hitoshi Yamakawa edit and publish Rona magazine and also began agitating for the liberation of women.
She was one of the most visible socialist women and was engaged in activism of women's and workers' rights. Upon establishment of the Ministry of Labor she was appointed the first director of its Women and Juvenile Bureau in 1947 from which she resigned in 1951. After the service, she engaged in research of the liberation of women and women's issues with younger researchers in addition to publishing and organizing committees for women's issues.
Yamakawa Kikue are also known as the author of many works and essays on the subject of socialism and women's rights. Among her works are "Modern Life and Women" and "Socialism and the Women's Movement."
Views
Involved in feminist discourse before the onset of war, Yamakawa contributed to the debate on motherhood. While many women–and certainly many men–viewed women’s procreative abilities as necessary for the state, Yamakawa supported instead independence for mothers. She also promoted socialist values, critiquing Japanese capitalism for its co-optation of female reproductive labor. To Yamakawa, the main flaw of other feminist stances of the time was their exclusion of lower and working-class women. Many of the reforms of other feminists, she thought, benefited only the bourgeois class; socialist revolution was necessary were women from other classes to be included.
During the war, Yamakawa was constantly critical of other feminists. She decried their support for the war and their willingness to sacrifice their children on the battlegrounds. Rather than making a display of eager patriotism in the hopes of gaining state recognition for women (as did Ichikawa Fusae, Hiratsuda Raicho, and others), she and her husband left the political realm for the countryside and farmed quails until the war ended.