Takehisa Yumeji 竹久夢二 (1884-1934) postcard illustration - Japan - 1910s

Takehisa Yumeji 竹久夢二 (1884-1934)

Shōnen Sekai 少年世界, New Year Issue and Nihon shōnen 日本少年 magazine covers - Japan - January 1913

Takehisa Yumeji 竹久夢二 (1884-1934) illustration for “Haru no shōkyoku” 春の小曲 (Spring Little Song), poem from a student of Kagami 鏡村 city published in Shoujo no Tomo 少女の友 magazine - Japan - April 1923

Sourceshowamodern.blog

Kitano Tsunetomi 北野恒富 (1880-1947)-Michiyuki 道行depictingShinjuu ten Amijima 心中天網島 (The love suicides at Amijima) - 1913 on Fukutomi Taro Collection: The Passion of the Cabaret Magnate exhibition poster - Japan - 2021

Kitano Tsunetomi 北野恒富 (1880-1947)

Seasons of the Pleasure Quarters - no. 3, Horie in Summer, Twilight (Kuruwa no shunju- Dai-san natsu [Horie], Yugure) - Japan - 1920s

Yagumo Emiko 八雲恵美子 (1903-1979) colorized portrait - Japan - 2022

SourceTwitter デジミ【D.M.C】official

Bertha Lum (1869-1954)

Land of the Bluebird-USA - 1916

Famous Japanese Feminist Authors. Left Yoshiko Yusa who was a famous russian/japanese translater and right her long term partner, another feminist author Toshiko Tamura.

Seito women at a new years party in 1913

The Seito magazines would later become a cornerstone of Japanese Feminism as it covered female-exclusive experiences and voices.

First issue of Seito in 1911, which became an integral part of the Japanese Women’s Rights Movement.

“The magazine’s name, Seitō, translated to “Bluestockings,” a nod to an unorthodox group of 18th-century English women who gathered to discuss politics and art, which was an extraordinary activity for their time.

But Seitō was not intended to be a radical or political publication. “We did not launch the journal to awaken the social consciousness of women or to contribute to the feminist movement,” wrote the magazine’s founder, Haruko Hiratsuka, who went by the penname Raichō, or “Thunderbird.” “Our only special achievement was creating a literary journal that was solely for women.” Raichō was most interested in self-discovery—“to plumb the depths of my being and realize my true self,” she wrote—and much of the writing in the magazine was confessional and personal, a 1910s version of the essays that might now be found in or Catapult.

Women’s feelings and inner thoughts, however, turned out to be a provocative challenge to the social and legal strictures of this era, when a woman’s role was to be a good wife and mother. The Seitō women imagined much wider and wilder emotional and professional lives for themselves. They fell in love, they indulged in alcohol, they built careers as writers, and they wrote about it all—publicly. The stories were radical enough that the government censored them. The story that prompted policemen to visit the magazine’s office late at night was a piece of fiction about a married women writing to her lover to ask him to meet her while her husband was away.

As they attracted public attention and disapproval, instead of shying away from the controversy they’d created, the editors of Seitō were forced to confront more baldly political questions, and this in turn earned them more banned issues. In the pages of their magazine they came to debate women’s equality, chastity, and abortion. Without originally intending to, they became some of Japan’s pioneering feminists.”

-Excerpt from HERE documenting women’s history in Japan