3 - The New Women

Summary

“I am a New Woman”

I am a New Woman. I am the Sun!

I am a unique human being.

At least, day after day I desire to be so.

The New Women not only desire the destruction of the old

morality and old laws built on men's selfishness,

They also try day after day to build a new world where there

will be a new religion, a new morality, and new laws...

The label ‘New Woman’ gained currency in Japan after Tsubouchi Shōyō, Professor of Literature at Waseda University, lectured on ‘The New Woman in Western Theatre’, using as his examples Ibsen's Nora, Sudermann's Magda, and Shaw's Vivie. The controversy generated by the characters created by Ibsen, Sudermann and Shaw was certainly one catalyst for the interest in the New Women; but this debate only gained currency in Japan because of an anxiety about the activities of women in public space, similar to the anxieties which had prompted debates on New Women in European countries before the turn of the century, and in China slightly later. The statement, ‘I am a New Woman’, was the defiant response of feminist and poet Hiratsuka Raichō to the debate on the New Women, the women who were the focus of scandal in intellectual circles in the second decade of the twentieth century.