The Day the Mountains Move

"The day comes when mountains move." With these words Yosano Akiko greeted the first issue of Seitō, Japan's pioneering women's magazine, in 1911, and they became a rallying cry of the Japanese women's movement.

The poet of Tangled Hair was also one of the boldest essayists of her age. In these pieces, written for the leading newspapers and magazines between 1904 and 1921, she demands the vote for women, economic independence and university education; attacks the "good wife, wise mother" doctrine and the tyranny of the mother-in-law; insists that women, and men, must learn to think for themselves; answers the critic who called her anti-war poem disloyal; and argues against sending Japanese troops to Siberia.

Contents: Random Thoughts; An Open Letter; Women and Thought; Women's Independence and Self-Support; On Mothers-in-Law and Daughters-in-Law, and its sequel; Women's Reconstruction and Higher Education; Toward a Life of Three Aspects in One; Why Send Troops?; Women Too Demand the Franchise; Basic Considerations on the Reconstruction of Women; A Protest to the Women Leaders; What Is "Womanliness"? Each is translated complete and unabridged directly from the Japanese.