The journal Seito, founded in 1911, and its leading figure Raicho Hiratsuka are well known. The journal has been considered a symbol of women who came to embrace the modern idea of sexyal equality. Since the second wave of feminism, Raicho's maternalism, eugenic perspective and war-cooperative attitudes have been severely criticized. The discussion has mainly focused on her discourse in the later volumes of Seito and after its discontinuation. In this paper, I investigate the discourse in Seito with an emphasis on its early days.
With respect to the Seito discourse, the controversies over chastity, abortion and prostitution have often been mentioned. I would like to discuss the formative process of the new category of "woman" in Seito that preceded all the later controversies.How was the category made, and what factors were eliminated from it? Who, in the end, was accepted as a 'real' woman? To investigate this process, I turn to lesbianism in Seito. Raicho is said to have been on intimate terms with a younger woman who was a member of Seito, Kokichi Otake. But she ended the relationship with Kokichi and ultimately defined her as a 'sexual inversion', which was a sexological term. Excluding Kokichi from Seito meant the removal of lesbianism from the 'natural' and 'true' category of "woman". Since women "had" to be heterosexual, this process was inevitable to make the new category of "woman" persuasive.
As can be seen from this, Raicho and Seito were largely influenced by modern Western thought, and the new category of "woman" in Seito was formed accordingly.Here I examine the formative process of this category and its influence on feminism in Japan.
抄録全体を表示