🌸 Hiratsuka Raichō — The Woman Who Reclaimed the Sun

A Simply Flava Spotlight Series

There are women in history who didn’t wait for permission.

They didn’t ask to be included.

They simply stood in their power and said,

“I was always meant to be here.”

Hiratsuka Raichō was one of those women.

Born in 1886, she came into a Japan that still expected women to stay quiet, obedient, and tucked neatly into their assigned place. But Raichō didn’t fit into those limits — and she didn’t pretend she did. Her spirit was too bright, her mind too sharp, and her voice too restless to be contained.

She became the founder of Seito, also known as the Bluestocking Society — Japan’s first women’s literary group. That may sound small today, but at that time, it was radical. A group of women writing, creating, questioning, imagining a world where they had a say?

Oh, Japan wasn’t ready for that.

But Raichō didn’t care who was ready.

She wrote with her whole chest.

She challenged the laws, the expectations, and the traditions that boxed women in. She talked openly about women’s desires, spirituality, identity, and equality — topics that were considered “too bold” or “too improper” for women of her time.

She believed women deserved:

education independence safety political power control over their own lives

And she fought for those things her entire life.

Her famous line —

“In the beginning, woman was the sun.”

— wasn’t just beautiful poetry.

It was a declaration:

Women were never meant to live in someone else’s shadow.

Raichō used her voice when using your voice could cost you everything.

She wrote when women weren’t supposed to write.

She spoke when silence was the expectation.

She led when leadership from a woman was considered outrageous.

This is why we honor her.

She didn’t just challenge the system —

she shattered the understanding of what Japanese women were allowed to be.

And her work lit a spark.

That spark carried through generations of feminists, activists, writers, and everyday women who realized they had the right to stand fully in themselves.

Today, when Japanese women vote, speak, create, or step into leadership —

Raichō’s light is there.

She was the sun.

She reminded women they were the sun too.

And she left a legacy bright enough for all of us to feel, even now.