Inventing “Lesbianism”

Hiratsuka Raichō and Female Same-Sex Attraction in Early Twentieth Century Japan

Abstract

In Japan, European sexology began to displace established frameworks for understanding sexuality, which were influenced by the long-established practice of male-male sexuality called nanshoku, in the 1910s. This paper considers how women in same-sex relationships appropriated or adapted the epistemologies available to them during this time of rapid modernization in which gender roles were contested and unstable. The case study is the pioneering feminist Hiratsuka Raichō, who from 1911 to 1912 was in a romantic relationship with another woman, Otake Kōkichi. Their relationship soured after Hiratsuka met Okumura Hiroshi, who later became her common-law husband. The pivot from Otake to Okumura coincides with Hiratsuka’s exposure to sexology, which framed her relationship with Otake as pathological and potential evidence of biological inferiority. Hiratsuka’s example is instructive of one possible outcome of contact with new and shifting interpretations of sexuality by women in early twentieth century Japan.