Background
Raichō Hiratsuka was born on 10 February 1886 in Tokyo; her father was vice-president of the Board of Audit.
Raichō Hiratsuka was born on 10 February 1886 in Tokyo; her father was vice-president of the Board of Audit.
She attended Ochanomizu Girls’ High School and in 1906 graduated from the home economics course of Japan Women’s University.
In 1920 she joined with Ichikawa Fusae and others in forming the New Women's Society and became active in the women’s suffrage movement. She and her associates called for revision of section five of the Peace Pre-servation Laws, which limited women’s political activities. As a result of their efforts, a revision of the law was passed by the Diet in 1922.
In 1929, Hiratsuka formed an all-women consumers’ union called Warera no Ie, with herself as director, and in 1930 she joined the Proletarian Women’s Art Alliance formed by Takamura Itsue and others. In the postwar period, she spoke out for the preservation of the new' Japanese constitution.
In 1953 she became president of the Federation of Japanese Women’s Organizations.
In 1911 she founded a women’s literary magazine called Seito (“Bluestocking”). The magazine’s motto, “In the beginning woman was the sun,” represented the first proclamation on behalf of women’s rights in Japan and was thereafter adopted as the slogan for groups engaged in the struggle to improve the position of women. In 1914 she left home and went to live with Okumura Hiroshi. In her role as an authority on women’s affairs, in 1918 she engaged in a dispute with the woman poet Yosano Akiko and others concerning the protection of motherhood, and the same year married Okumura Hiroshi.