ABSTRACT
Women who participated in the socialist movement in early twentieth century Japan were engaged in a threefold process. One task involved the theorisation of the links between socialism and feminism in the context of industrialisation and a political and social system which constituted new groupings on the basis of class and gender. Socialist women also attempted to create organisational structures which could mobilise women effectively in order to address their demands to representatives of capital and the state, in the context of state policies which circumscribed public political activities by women. Finally, socialist women were engaged in a process of forging new identities: their writings were part of the process of imagining new identities for women as workers and as activists.
