■Running Time 

●Apr. 2-5, 9-12

13:00 / 15:35

●Apr. 6, 7, 14

10:25 / 13:00 / 15:35

■Admission 

-Adults ¥1,500

-Under College Students, Over 60, and Persons with a Disability Certificate as well as up to two caregivers accompanying ¥1,300

■Synopsis

“Women obey the father at home, the husband in marriage, and the children after a husband’s death.”

Ito Noe was a women’s rights activist in early 20th century Japan.

A century ago, she used the power of her pen to directly challenge the marriage system and social inequality. Her writing, driven by unbridled passion, was inspired by the pioneering feminist Hiratsuka Raicho, who famously wrote, “In the beginning, woman was truly the sun.” Ito married the Dadaist writer Tsuji Jun, before making a family with her soulmate, the anarchist Osugi Sakae.

She was uninhibited in her life and her often autobiographical writing, which was still flowering when she and Osugi were killed in an outrageous act of police violence in 1923. Ito was 28. The life she lived in resolute opposition to social and gender discrimination reverberates still today, when Japanese society remains infused with a sense of entrapment.