Women Who Fell in Love Through a Women’s Magazine in the Taishō Era

The Woman on the right: Otake Kōkichi

The Woman sitting in the centre next to the man: Hiratsuka Raicho

In the early twentieth century, the Japanese female artist Otake Kōkichi and the writer Hiratsuka Raichō met and fell in love through their involvement with the women’s magazine Bluestocking (Seitō).

Otake Kōkichi’s father was a painter who insisted that she study traditional Japanese painting from a young age and later sent her to art school. Although she had little personal interest in it, she lacked the strength to resist. At one point, after a conflict with the dormitory matron, she was forced to leave campus and live with her uncle. Amidst a growing sense of despair, one autumn day, she discovered a leaflet tucked inside a letter:

“One morning, as I was sweeping the garden, the postman brought a letter addressed to my aunt… For some reason, I felt especially drawn to it. I secretly turned it over and saw the words ‘Seitō-sha’… To my aunt, it was just a printed advertisement. But to me, it was as if the heavens had trembled.”

“When I first saw Bluestocking, I read Hiratsuka Raichō’s essay In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun over and over every day, reciting it as if it were sacred scripture… What a dazzling, defiant declaration it was! I read her words aloud again and again. From that room, I kept writing letters to her… Eventually, I made arrangements with the local bookshop owner to deliver each issue to me the moment it arrived.”

Later, Kōkichi finally visited Hiratsuka in person:

“Beside the bed stood a small incense burner, with a single stick of incense rising straight up, its smoke gently ascending, unwavering, all the way to the ceiling. The room was filled with a soft, elegant fragrance. We sat in a row before the tightly closed sliding door, barely even breathing.

The person I had admired for so long was about to step through that door. I tried my best to calm myself, but I felt utterly drained. As I focused my mind on the drifting smoke, the sliding door quietly opened. It was Ms. Hiratsuka—

I instinctively looked up and met her gaze, but immediately lowered my eyes out of shyness.”

“She was quiet and beautiful, and the natural elegance that emanated from her couldn’t be described simply as ‘noble.’ It was the radiance of intelligence… My whole body trembled; the awe I felt seemed about to consume me. As I realized that those luminous eyes of hers were gazing upon my bowed, silent self, I grew even more paralyzed, digging my toes into the floor.

Then it struck me: perhaps this was fate. Perhaps I would come to love her more deeply than anyone else. A strange, almost superstitious, prayer-like emotion overwhelmed me, and I kept thinking it over and over, stubbornly, obsessively.”

“I had so many questions I wanted to ask Ms. Hiratsuka, but I was too overwhelmed to speak. She gradually opened up conversation from her side, mostly about art—though just in fragments. She never once mentioned philosophy or religion—after all, Ms. Kobayashi (Kazue) and I were still very young then.

Ms. Hiratsuka told me, ‘You should devote yourself to creating good works.’ I couldn’t bring myself to say, ‘Actually, I don’t really want to paint.’ Instead, I declared firmly, ‘I will make great art.’”

“Out of sheer shyness, I felt as though I might dissolve into the air. I couldn’t even say the one thing closest to my heart: ‘What I truly wish is to study literature.’

And yet… if it were for this person…

That feeling surged within me.”