“In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun” (manifesto of Seitō)

Introduction

Seitō (“Bluestocking”) was a literary magazine written and edited by women, founded in Tokyo in September 1911 by Hiratsuka Raichō and a few friends; its name echoed the English Bluestockings. Hiratsuka’s opening essay uses the image of the sun – often read as an allusion to the sun goddess Amaterasu – for a lost female creativity and calls on women to recover it through concentrated inner effort, in language shaped by her Zen practice. The first issue opened with a poem by Yosano Akiko. Until it ceased in 1916, the magazine was at the centre of public debates on chastity, abortion and prostitution, and the essay is regarded as a founding text of Japanese feminism.