Seitō (Japanese: 青鞜), also known by its translated title Bluestocking, was a literary magazine created in 1911 by a group of five women: Haru Raichō Hiratsuka, Yasumochi Yoshiko, Mozume Kazuko, Kiuchi Teiko, and Nakano Hatsuko.

[3] The group called themselves the Japanese Bluestocking Society (青鞜社 Seitō-sha) and used the magazine to promote the equal rights of women through literature and education.

The magazine they developed was designed to articulate women's self-awareness and the gender-based societal limitations they faced, but its promotion of early feminist beliefs through controversial publications caused it to be banned by the Japanese Home Ministry for being "disruptive to society".

The name of the publication is a reference to the Blue Stockings Society of mid-18th century England, where women would gather for academic discussions about literature and philosophy to forgo social evenings spent playing cards and dancing, and would often invite intellectual men to join them.

The original English Bluestocking Society is credited with starting first-wave feminism and its name has been adopted to represent various feminist movements all over the world.

The Japanese word for Bluestocking, 青鞜, or Seitō, was created by Hiratsuka Raichō with the assistance of Ikuta Chōkō, by combining the Kanji "sei" for "blue" and the character "tō" for "stocking.

[5] Daughters of the affluent enjoyed an increase in girls schools, constructed to produce women that were "good wives, wise mothers."

The Meiji 6 Society was one such group, which criticised Japanese governmental and social policies that undervalued women as keeping Japan from advancing to the world stage.

[7] Earlier in the same year that the first edition of Bluestocking was released, International Women's Day was celebrated globally for the first time, two incidents of love-suicides involving lesbians circulated in newspapers across Japan, and the biggest actress in Tokyo, Matsui Sumako, performed the role of Nora Helmer in A Doll's House.

[9][10] The writing contained in Bluestocking was complex and diverse ranging from pieces spanning many genres written by Japanese women to translations of pertinent Western texts.

It featured translations of Western writers such as Anton Chekhov, Guy de Maupassant, Edgar Allan Poe, Havelock Ellis, Lester Ward, Emma Goldman, Ellen Key, Sonya Kovalesky, Olive Schreiner, Henrik Ibsen, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mary Wollstonecraft, Hermann Sudermann, George Bernard Shaw, Frank Wedekind, and more.

Led by Hiratsuka Raichō, Japan's first all-women literary magazine was developed out of inspiration from the writings of Swedish feminist author Ellen Key and the intelligent and domestic heroine of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll's House, Nora Helmer.

[11] For almost a year, Itō ran the magazine, making contribution by readers more accessible and placing a greater emphasis on societal problems.

The writings of Bluestocking quickly caught the attention of the Japanese Home Ministry because of the magazine's explicit criticism of Japan's private capital system.

Prominent educator Ishigaki Iyako called the Bluestockings a blight upon society and urged her female students to abscond from their ideals.

Soon after, Otake's uncle bought members of the Bluestockings admission to the red-light district as he thought they should be aware of women purchased for prostitution.

[6] While the Bluestockings members saw themselves as serious intellectuals, these incidents cemented them as regular subjects in Tokyo newspapers and every aspect of their personal lives was criticised and mocked.

These facts combined meant that the media heavily attacked the lesbian relationships of some of the writers of Bluestocking, such as Hiratsuka Raicho, Otake Kokichi, Tamura Toshiko, and Naganuma Chieko.

[13][10] The June 1915 edition of Bluestocking was banned for an article calling for abortion to be legalized in Japan and the authorities' restriction of the magazine became much more harsh.

Local bookstores were pressured by the government to stop carrying Bluestocking all together after censors banned entire publishing runs as "injurious to public morals".

To make such charges stick, the authorities provoked public attention, which in turn resulted in police inquiries, which brought shame to the member's families and instigated fear of losing marriage proposals and employment opportunities.