While studying in Germany (1884-88), Mori Ohgai attended the general assembly of Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein, the first unified organization for the liberation of women in Germany, and his interest in the movement for women’s liberation was strengthened. When he came back to Japan, he supported the publication of Seitoh (Blue Stockings), a magazine issued in 1912 by Hiratsuka Raicho aiming at women’s liberation.
This paper attempts to examine the roles played by Ohgai’s Saezuri in the discussion of women’s liberation around the year 1911. In May 1911,quite a few Socialists represented by Kohtoku Shusui were arrested on charge of High Treason, and some were executed in January 1912. The government therefore came to regard as dangerous not only socialism but ideas and thoughts that promoted awareness of individualism and liberalism—ideas dangerous enough to shake the foundations of an imperial state. The movement of women’s liberation was considered a dangerous thing.
In 1911, Kawada Shiro’s Women’s Problems based on John Stuart Mill’s claim for women’s liberation was banned. On the other hand, Uesugi Shinkichi’s Women’s Problems (1911), in which Uesugi looked upon women’s liberation as radical and dangerous, was widely accepted. It was then that Ohgai published his Saezuri, in which he, in a form of commentary on current affairs, explained that the Women’s liberation movement in Europe was but a moderate, not a radical, thing, and that it was succeeding. He claimed that it would be against the general world tendency if Japan was to suppress the movement toward the liberation of women.
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