Reply to Hiratsuka, Yamakawa and Yamada

Yosano makes women’s economic autonomy a feminist challenge to maternal duty, while leaving unpaid care and collective support contested. Does state support for mothers recognize the public value of care, or fix women more securely within motherhood? Yosano Akiko’s reply belongs to Japan’s debate over maternal protection. It first appeared in Taiyō in November 1918; its inclusion in a 1919 collection is a different publication event.

To whom is the demand for independence addressed?

Yosano refuses to make motherhood the complete definition of a woman and emphasizes earning the means of subsistence. Setting maternal support beside wages, allowances and military-related payments, she asks why the state supports a person and on what terms. Economic dependence restricts choice; defining childbirth as a female duty deserving state maintenance might strengthen that dependence.

The article answers Hiratsuka Raichō, Yamakawa Kikue and Yamada Waka, rather than stating a position shared by all participants. Doubts about the state, accounts of poverty and judgments about maternal labor do not necessarily lead to the same policy conclusion.

Independence must not become a moral test of poverty

The argument’s force also marks a limitation. Centering self-support can underestimate how unpaid care consumes the time available for paid employment, or turn an inability to earn independently into personal failure. Rejecting maternal supremacy need not mean rejecting public provision. The question is whether assistance expands choices without making the role of wife or mother its price of admission.

Yosano’s earlier critique of motherhood’s primacy reveals continuities within a changing dispute. Fraser’s account of life after the family wage moves beyond independence versus assistance toward the organization of income, care and employment. Neither praise of mothers nor praise of self-reliance can replace an examination of the conditions of everyday life.

Original title: 平塚・山川・山田三女史に答う.