© Columbia University Press
In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun: The Autobiography of a Japanese Feminist
October, 2006
Cloth, 432 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-13812-3
$36.50
/ £21.50
"Everyone interested in Japanese feminism owes Craig an immense debt of gratitude for choosing to undertake this translation, and for doing it so well... Essential." — Choice
"A tour de force of meticulous scholarship and exquisitely rendered English" — Monumenta Nipponica
"A significant contribution to Japanese Studies and to the study of feminist thought as a transnational phenomenon." — Jan Bardsley, Pacific Affairs
"This book is fascinating for the light it sheds on a single family of the upper-middle social class in Meiji, Japan, and on the formative factors that led Hiratsuka Raicho to her later endeavors. The translation is excellent: it reads smoothly and Craig seems able to convey Hiratsuka's individual voice." — Laurel Rasplica Rodd, professor of Japanese, University of Colorado
"This autobiography of Japan’s foremost feminist presents a vivid portrait, rich in detail, of the education and everyday life for the daughter of a government bureaucrat growing up in Tokyo during the 1890s. Hiratsuka Raicho’s transformation into an activist intellectual who, as the founding editor of the landmark journal Seito, recast the boundaries of feminist discourse deserves the widest possible readership in Japanese studies. Teruko Craig’s admirably smooth and fluid translation is a pleasure to read and a major contribution to our field." — Joan E. Ericson, associate professor of Japanese, Colorado College, and author of Be a Woman: Hayashi Fumiko and Modern Japanese Women’s Literature