She became a controversial member because she instigated the "Five-colored sake" and Yoshiwara incidents and because of her lesbian affair with Hiratsuka Raicho.
In her writing career post-Bluestocking, she incorporated first-wave feminist, Marxist, and anti-imperialist ideas into her fiction works.
While she is regarded as a pioneer for queer feminism in Japan, her extended breaks from writing to raise her children and protest the Second Sino-Japanese War led to her having a whitewashed legacy.
Her father was a woodcut printing artist and urged her to be his heir, and her mother educated her about feminine arts like shamisen (三味線) and dance.
Her father later converted to Christianity and changed his name to Francisco Otake after his wife died and his daughter moved to Tokyo.
In the summer of 1912, Otake invited other women from the Japanese Bluestocking Society, Hiratsuka and Nakano Hatsuko, to go to Yoshiwara with her.
Other members of the Japanese Bluestocking Society called to expel Otake for exploiting Yoshiwara women and bringing negative press to their group.
[2] In 1914, Otake met, fell in love with, and married Tomimoto Kenkichi, an imperialist and gifted ceramic artist from the Nara prefecture.
Akira's name (陽) came from the same Japanese characters that were used in the Bluestocking manifesto that compared women to the sun (太陽).
Soon after World War II ended, Kenkichi divorced Otake for wearing men's kimonos, ruining his imperial reputation, and having lesbian tendencies.
[1] After leaving the Japanese Bluestocking Society, Otake translated feminist theory, made art for journal covers, and wrote fairytales and fiction for different magazines for work.
To demonstrate her protest against the Second Sino-Japanese War, she took a hiatus from writing and opened a salon to support progressive women.
Otake educated her daughters with a variety of perspectives and taught them to reject the "Good Wives, Wise Mothers" construct.