Portrait
Nobuko Yoshiya
Born
12 January 1896Niigata, Japan
Died
11 July 1973Kamakura, Japan · aged 77
WriterJapan130th birthday

Nobuko Yoshiya

One of Japan’s most popular novelists wrote stories of love between girls – and lived for fifty years with the woman she loved.

Nobuko Yoshiya grew up in a family in which, as she later wrote, her brothers were valued more than she was. She began writing as a teenager and moved to Tokyo after school.

Her collection of stories “Hana monogatari” (Flower Tales), published from 1916, told of intense, romantic friendships between girls at boarding schools. It became hugely popular and founded the genre of “Class S” fiction, about love between schoolgirls. Yoshiya went on to write dozens of serialised novels for newspapers and magazines and became one of the best-selling and highest-paid writers of her time in Japan.

In 1923 she met Monma Chiyo, a mathematics teacher, who became her partner for life. Since same-sex couples had no legal recognition in Japan, Yoshiya later legally adopted Chiyo, the only way to make her her heir. Yoshiya wore her hair short and dressed in Western suits, and lived more openly than almost any other woman in Japan at the time.

Her stories are regarded today as pioneering works of Japanese lesbian literature and as forerunners of the yuri genre in manga. She died in Kamakura in 1973, aged 77.

More in January

01JanBorn 1879147th birthday

E. M. Forster

His published novels challenged social convention; “Maurice”, withheld until after his death, imagined a happy future for two men.

01JanDied 192898th anniversary of death

Loïe Fuller

With swirling silk and coloured light she invented a new kind of dance – and lived in Paris for nearly thirty years with her partner Gabrielle Bloch.

02JanBorn 193888th birthday

Lynn Conway

IBM fired her for transitioning in 1968 – she went on to revolutionise microchip design and became a role model for trans engineers.

02JanDied 20197th anniversary of death

Julia Grant

In 1979 nearly nine million Britons watched her transition on the BBC – the first time such a story had been told so openly on British television.

03JanBorn 1897129th birthday

Dorothy Arzner

One of the few women directing in Hollywood’s studio era, she made films that gave women room to question the roles available to them.

03JanDied 201016th anniversary of death

Mary Daly

A Catholic theologian who left the Church to become one of the most radical voices of lesbian feminism.

03JanDied 200323rd anniversary of death

Monique Wittig

“Lesbians are not women”: the French writer turned lesbian existence into a radical challenge to the idea of gender itself.

04JanBorn 198145th birthday

Alicia Garza

Her words after the Trayvon Martin verdict helped give Black Lives Matter its name.

04JanBorn 196066th birthday

Michael Stipe

The voice of R.E.M. has described himself as queer and attracted to both men and women – long before the word was common.

04JanDied 198640th anniversary of death

Christopher Isherwood

His Berlin stories helped inspire “Cabaret”; later writing made his own gay life and relationships explicit.

05JanBorn 194284th birthday

Terenci Moix

The flamboyant Catalan novelist mocked the morality of the Franco era – and was one of the first public figures in Spain to live openly as a gay man.

06JanDied 199333rd anniversary of death

Rudolf Nureyev

The greatest male dancer of the 20th century defected from the Soviet Union in 1961 and transformed ballet – he died of AIDS at 54.

07JanBorn 1899127th birthday

Francis Poulenc

A French composer whose music held wit, religious faith and desire in close tension.

07JanBorn 199135th birthday

Caster Semenya

The Olympic 800-metre champion challenged eligibility rules that required her to alter her natural hormone levels.

07JanDied 1912114th anniversary of death

Sophia Jex-Blake

She fought her way into medical school in Edinburgh against riots and resistance – and shared her later life with Dr Margaret Todd.

08JanBorn 194779th birthday

David Bowie

His changing musical identities and gender-defying performances expanded the possibilities of mainstream pop.

08JanBorn 194185th birthday

Graham Chapman

A comedian whose straight-faced absurdity helped give Monty Python its distinctive voice.

08JanDied 1896130th anniversary of death

Paul Verlaine

The great poet of French Symbolism and Arthur Rimbaud lived a passionate, destructive love affair – which ended with a gunshot.

09JanBorn 1908118th birthday

Simone de Beauvoir

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” – the author of “The Second Sex” also loved women, a side of her life that remains controversial.

09JanBorn 1924102nd birthday

Sergei Parajanov

A visionary filmmaker whose dreamlike films defied Soviet realism – he was sent to a labour camp, among other things for homosexuality.

09JanBorn 195076th birthday

Rio Reiser

The voice of German protest rock was practically the country’s first openly gay rock musician – at a time when Paragraph 175 was still in force.

09JanDied 194680th anniversary of death

Countee Cullen

His formally crafted poetry explored race, belief and beauty, while his private correspondence opens further questions about desire.

09JanDied 1923103rd anniversary of death

Katherine Mansfield

New Zealand’s great short-story writer loved both women and men, and changed the modern short story before dying at 34.

10JanBorn 193492nd birthday

Louisa Jo Killen

One of the great voices of the British folk revival began living as a woman at 76 – and regretted nothing.

10JanDied 201610th anniversary of death

David Bowie

His changing musical identities and gender-defying performances expanded the possibilities of mainstream pop.

10JanDied 201412th anniversary of death

Roger Jean-Claude Mbede

A single text message to a man sent him to prison in Cameroon – Amnesty International named him a prisoner of conscience. He died at 34.

10JanDied 195769th anniversary of death

Gabriela Mistral

A Chilean poet, teacher and diplomat whose intimate life was long hidden behind her public reputation.

10JanDied 201115th anniversary of death

María Elena Walsh

Every Argentine child knows her songs – and her partner of decades was the photographer Sara Facio.

11JanBorn 1899127th birthday

Eva Le Gallienne

A Broadway star at 21, she gave it up to found a theatre for everyone – and called love between women “the most beautiful thing in the world”.

11JanBorn 195175th birthday

Carol Leigh

As the “Scarlot Harlot”, she coined the term “sex work” – and brought humour and safer-sex messages to the early AIDS protests in San Francisco.

12JanBorn 197848th birthday

Hannah Gadsby

A comedian whose work asks what humour can reveal, and what the punchline can conceal.

12JanBorn 1856170th birthday

John Singer Sargent

The most fashionable portrait painter of his age never married – and his private drawings of male nudes have only recently been widely shown.

12JanDied 196561st anniversary of death

Lorraine Hansberry

The first Black woman to have a play on Broadway wrote anonymous letters to a lesbian magazine about homophobia and feminism.

13JanBorn 196759th birthday

M. Gessen

A Russian-American journalist who fought Putin’s anti-gay laws in Moscow, had to flee, and won a Pulitzer Prize in 2026.

13JanBorn 1885141st birthday

Anna Vock

Known as “Mammina”, she helped sustain the Swiss organising and publishing networks from which “Der Kreis” emerged.

13JanBorn 194086th birthday

Edmund White

His fiction, memoirs and biographies traced gay experience from secrecy and liberation to the losses of the AIDS years.

14JanBorn 1925101st birthday

Yukio Mishima

One of Japan’s greatest writers described homosexual desire in “Confessions of a Mask” – and ended his life in a spectacular political act.

15JanBorn 1862164th birthday

Loïe Fuller

With swirling silk and coloured light she invented a new kind of dance – and lived in Paris for nearly thirty years with her partner Gabrielle Bloch.

15JanBorn 1864162nd birthday

Frances Benjamin Johnston

A photographer who recorded public figures, education and the changing architecture of the American South.

15JanDied 1815211th anniversary of death

Mademoiselle Raucourt

The great tragedienne of the Comédie-Française loved women – and when the Church refused her coffin, the crowd stormed the doors.

16JanBorn 193393rd birthday

Susan Sontag

The great essayist of “Notes on ‘Camp’” and “On Photography” loved women, among them Annie Leibovitz – but rarely spoke about it.

17JanDied 199630th anniversary of death

Barbara Jordan

Her speech during the Watergate hearings made the Texas congresswoman a nationally recognised voice for constitutional government.

17JanDied 20197th anniversary of death

Mary Oliver

One of America’s best-loved poets wrote about geese, ponds and attention – and shared her life for over forty years with photographer Molly Malone Cook.

18JanBorn 197947th birthday

Leo Varadkar

Ireland’s first openly gay prime minister came out in 2015, just months before the country voted for marriage equality.

18JanBorn 197155th birthday

Binyavanga Wainaina

His writing challenged clichés about Africa and made room for new literary voices and openly queer lives.

18JanDied 196066th anniversary of death

Gladys Bentley

A Harlem blues performer whose tuxedo, piano playing and desire for women challenged the rules of her time.

18JanDied 199630th anniversary of death

Leonor Fini

A surrealist painter of powerful women and sphinxes who lived for decades in a household with two men and her many cats.

19JanBorn 1923103rd birthday

Eugénio de Andrade

A Portuguese poet whose spare, sensual writing found meaning in the body and the natural world.

19JanBorn 198244th birthday

Pete Buttigieg

A small-town mayor who came out while in office became the first openly gay person to win delegates in a US presidential primary.

19JanBorn 1921105th birthday

Patricia Highsmith

The creator of Tom Ripley also wrote, under a pseudonym, the first lesbian novel with a happy ending to become a bestseller.

20JanBorn 1590436th birthday

Benedetta Carlini

The investigations into a visionary Tuscan abbess also preserved testimony about sexual contact between women.

21JanBorn 1895131st birthday

Cristóbal Balenciaga

His command of cut and fabric reshaped twentieth-century couture, while his private life remained closely guarded.

21JanBorn 1840186th birthday

Sophia Jex-Blake

She fought her way into medical school in Edinburgh against riots and resistance – and shared her later life with Dr Margaret Todd.

21JanBorn 194680th birthday

Nella Martinetti

“Bella Nella” from Ticino won the first Grand Prix der Volksmusik – and co-wrote the song with which Céline Dion won Eurovision for Switzerland.

21JanBorn 193096th birthday

Ernst Ostertag

A Swiss teacher and campaigner whose life with Röbi Rapp became part of the country’s queer history.

21JanDied 193294th anniversary of death

Lytton Strachey

The witty founder of modern biography was at the heart of the Bloomsbury Group – and lived in an unconventional household with a painter who loved him.

22JanBorn 1788238th birthday

Lord Byron

Romanticism’s most famous poet loved women and young men – and died fighting for Greek independence.

22JanDied 195769th anniversary of death

Claire Waldoff

Her Berlin dialect, sharp delivery and distinctive stage clothes made her a leading cabaret performer of the Weimar years.

23JanDied 198145th anniversary of death

Samuel Barber

The composer of the “Adagio for Strings” shared his life for over forty years with the composer Gian Carlo Menotti.

23JanDied 1882144th anniversary of death

Karl Maria Kertbeny

He invented the word “homosexual” – and used it to argue against the criminal laws of his time.

23JanDied 201511th anniversary of death

Pedro Lemebel

“I speak for my difference”: a queer writer who wore high heels to challenge both Pinochet and the left.

24JanBorn 1712314th birthday

Frederick the Great

A Prussian king whose military ambitions and intellectual life sit beside a much-debated private history.

24JanBorn 761950th birthday

Hadrian

A Roman emperor whose public commemoration of Antinous gave a private loss an extraordinary afterlife.

24JanDied 198343rd anniversary of death

George Cukor

A Hollywood director whose close attention to performance produced enduring comedies, dramas and musicals.

25JanBorn 1874152nd birthday

W. Somerset Maugham

Once the highest-paid author in the world, he lived on the Riviera for decades with his partner Gerald Haxton.

25JanBorn 195274th birthday

Peter Tatchell

Beaten, arrested and vilified for decades, the campaigner has fought for LGBTQ rights from Bermondsey to Moscow.

25JanBorn 1882144th birthday

Virginia Woolf

The great modernist writer wrote “Orlando”, a novel about changing sex, as a love letter to Vita Sackville-West.

25JanDied 200521st anniversary of death

Philip Johnson

The architect of the Glass House shaped modern architecture for seventy years – a career with a dark chapter in the 1930s.

26JanBorn 194482nd birthday

Angela Davis

Her acquittal after an international campaign was followed by decades of work on racism, feminism and prison abolition.

26JanBorn 195868th birthday

Ellen DeGeneres

A comedian whose public coming out changed the possibilities for gay characters on American television.

26JanDied 201115th anniversary of death

David Kato

He challenged the public exposure and persecution of gay Ugandans, winning a privacy case shortly before his murder.

27JanDied 198739th anniversary of death

Norman McLaren

A pioneer of animation who painted directly onto film – and lived for fifty years with his partner Guy Glover.

28JanBorn 1873153rd birthday

Colette

She reclaimed authorship of her early novels and made women’s desire, work and independence subjects of lasting literary importance.

29JanBorn 196066th birthday

Gia Carangi

A model whose brief career challenged fashion’s conventions and whose death exposed the reach of the AIDS crisis.

29JanBorn 196066th birthday

Greg Louganis

An Olympic diver who later used his visibility to challenge stigma around sexuality and HIV.

30JanDied 196363rd anniversary of death

Francis Poulenc

A French composer whose music held wit, religious faith and desire in close tension.

30JanDied 20215th anniversary of death

Sophie

A visionary producer who pioneered hyperpop – and came out as a trans woman with a song called “It’s Okay to Cry”.

31JanBorn 1902124th birthday

Tallulah Bankhead

A stage star famous for her husky voice, her wit and her “dahling” – who made no secret of loving both men and women.

31JanBorn 194284th birthday

Derek Jarman

He brought queer history and political anger into experimental cinema, then made illness, love and a coastal garden part of his final work.