Japanese writer Nobuko Yoshiya was BOTD in 1896. Born in Niigata Prefecture, she was raised in Mooka and Tochigi in a conservative middle-class family. Rejecting her family’s wish for her to become a good wife, she moved to Tokyo in her teens, dressing in an androgynous style, cutting her hair short, and becoming one of the first Japanese women to own a car. She became famous with her first story collection Flower Tales, chronicling romantic friendships between women, many featuring unrequited love and unhappy endings. In her later work, she presented female same-sex relationships as similar to sisterhood and complementary to heterosexuality. Many of her stories focused on intergenerational and inter-class relationships, a genre known as “Class S”. Yoshiya lived for over 50 years with her partner Monma Chiyo. Unusually for her times, she spoke publicly about her personal life via essays and magazine interviews. One of Japan’s most prolific and commercially successful writers, she is now considered a pioneer of lesbian literature. She died in 1973 aged 77. Her self-designed house in Kamakura was willed to the city on her death, and is now a memorial museum, curiously open only twice a year.