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Hiratsuka Raicho and Early Japanese Feminism. By HIROKO TOMIDA. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2004. xii, 482 pp. $180.00 (cloth).
This book examines the life, work, and reception of the celebrated feminist Hiratsuka Raicho (1886-1971). Memorialized in popular biographies, a novel, a film, and a comic book, Hiratsuka has also been the topic of much recent scholarship. An eight-volume edition of her collected works was published in 1983-84 while a four-volume autobiography, Genshi, josei wa taiyo de atta (In the Beginning, Woman was the Sun), written in collaboration with Kobayashi Tomie and published in 1971-72, continues to be a best seller. This new study in English is a welcome addition.
Hiroko Tomida aims "to produce a less heroic, fuller and more contextual analysis of this major Japanese figure" (p. 17) by drawing on a wide range of primary sources, including Hiratsuka's work, biographies of her feminist contemporaries, oral histories, and journalism. She seeks to place Hiratsuka in a comparative framework by making frequent references to women's movements in the U.S. and especially in Britain. As a resource guide to materials pertinent to Hiratsuka and Japanese feminism, complete with lengthy appendixes, this is a most valuable reference indeed.
Tomida's introduction is a frankly critical review of the work,...