Yamakawa Kikue | |
|---|---|
 Yamakawa Kikue photographed in 1920 | |
| Native name | 山川菊栄 |
| Born | Morita Kikue November 3, 1890 Kouji, Tokyo, Japan |
| Died | November 2, 1980 (aged 89) Tokyo, Japan |
| Notable works | Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family Life |
| Spouse | |
Yamakawa Kikue (山川菊栄, November 3, 1890 – November 2, 1980) was a Japanese essayist, activist, and socialist feminist who contributed to the development of feminism in modern Japan.
Born into a highly-educated family of the former samurai class, Yamakawa graduated from the private women's college Joshi Eigaku Juku (renamed Tsuda College in 1948) in 1912.[1] In 1916, she married the communist activist and theoretician Yamakawa Hitoshi, who, in 1922, founded the short-lived pre-war Japanese Communist Party and was a leader of the Labor-Farmer faction.[2]
In pre-war times, she contributed to the development of feminism as a founding member of the Red Wave Society (Sekirankai), Japan's first socialist women's organization, and she was one of the most visible socialist women.[3] She is famous for "her position in debates on prostitution and motherhood, in which she consistently challenged liberal feminists (who she termed "bourgeois feminists") on the possibility of women achieving full rights within a capitalist system".[2] While she is perhaps better known for these debates, "her participation in male-dominant socialist organizations and her interventionist writings on behalf of women within those organizations, directed toward her male socialist peers, were equally substantial".[3]
After the end of World War II, she became the first head of the Women's and Minors' Bureau of the Ministry of Labor from 1947 to 1951.[4] In addition, she engaged in activism of women's and workers' rights.[2]