“Seito” (Bluestocking) Magazine
Date
1910
Credits
Format
- Magazine 634
Type of Work
- Finished work 5481
Locations Made
- Japan 264
Related Items
"It was created by women, to feature women’s writing to a female audience. In Japan in 1911, it was daring for a woman to put her name in print on anything besides a very pretty poem. 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 xoJane or Catapult."—https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/bluestockings-feminist-magazine-japan-sassy
