she wrote a resolution that she would work for the liberation of women. In the first year of study, Kikue visited a spinning mill factory with her Christian acquaintances and was shocked to see female workers work in terrible working conditions. When she heard Christian lecturers praise the work there, she was outraged at the notion that people should appreciate their work in spite of the terrible conditions in which work was done. This experience made her realize that religion could not solve the manifold problems faced by women factory workers. This experience fueled her future course of action and awakened her to socialism and social science. After her graduation in 1912, Kikue worked in a publishing company part-time, engaging in making an English dictionary and translation. As a feminist thinker and critic Controversy over the abolition of prostitution (1915–1916) From 1915 through 1916, Kikue made a debut as Aoyama Kikue in the world of criticism within the larger debate on the abolition of prostitution with a Japanese feminist Itō Noe on Seito, the first female literary magazine in Japan. Itō Noe criticized the Christian female organization's movement to abolish the prostitution licensed by the government because the organization's movement was "hypocritical" in that the organization tried to abolish the public prostitution form the viewpoints of valuing "virginity" and "chastity". She blamed the way of the Christian movement which looked down the sex industry and tried to solve the issue just by taking the jobs away from sex workers. Itō also said, ″the sex industry is acknowledged by the public because, as everyone says, the industry has been strengthened by men's natural demands and a long history of the industry.″ Unlike Itō who totally disagreed to the movements, Kikue, to some extent, agreed to the Christian movement aiming at abolishing the public prostitution. However, on the one hand, Kikue agreed to Itō's argument about the movement of Christian women's organizations in that the movement divided women into two categories: "clean" and "unclean" women. On the other hand, Kikue argued that against Itō that the long history of prostitution could not justify the existence of the industry, and that the licensed prostitution was not the system created by men's natural demands but created according to the social system that internalized unnatural power balance between men and women. Moreover, Kikue said that she would disagree to the system from which women suffer