Verda Majo

Who They Were

Verda Majo was the Esperanto pen name of Teru Hasegawa (長谷川テル, Hasegawa Teru), a Japanese writer, pacifist, Esperantist, feminist, and antifascist. She was born on 7 March 1912 in Ōtsuki-shi, a city in Yamanashi Prefecture, during the first year of the Taishō era (大正, Taishō). Her life spanned the Taishō period (1912–1926) and into the early Shōwa period, ending with her death on 14 January 1947 in Jiamusi, in northeastern China.

Her Esperanto name, Verda Majo, translates literally as "green May." The name reflects her commitment to the international language movement, where green is the symbolic colour of Esperanto, and May evokes the springtime renewal associated with progressive political hopes.

Life and Career

Hasegawa grew up in a Japan undergoing rapid social change. The Taishō era was marked by democratic movements, labour organising, and the spread of socialist and anarchist ideas, and she absorbed these currents early. She became active as a writer and political thinker, and Esperanto became her vehicle for international solidarity. Esperanto, created in the late nineteenth century as a neutral international language, attracted pacifists and leftists in Japan precisely because it promised communication across national and imperial boundaries.

Her antifascist convictions deepened as Japan's military expanded its war in China in the 1930s. Hasegawa opposed the war and used her writing to argue for peace, women's rights, and international cooperation. Her feminism was inseparable from her pacifism: she saw militarism as a system that crushed women and workers alike, and she sought alliances with women beyond Japan's borders.

The exact trajectory of her later years is tied to the war's chaos. By the mid-1940s, she was in China, where the Japanese imperial army had established colonial administration and, later, prisoner and refugee camps. She died in Jiamusi on 14 January 1947, shortly after the end of the war, while still in China. The circumstances of her death are not recorded in the available sources, but she did not live to see Japan's postwar reconstruction.

Why They Matter

Hasegawa matters because she embodied a strand of Japanese resistance that is often overlooked in histories focused on military and political leaders. She was a woman, a writer, and an Esperantist at a time when Japanese nationalism demanded conformity, and she chose internationalism instead. Her life demonstrates that the Esperanto movement in Japan was not a hobbyist's pastime but a serious political commitment, one that connected Japanese pacifists to a global network of like-minded activists.

Her antifascism was not abstract. She lived through the Taishō democracy and its collapse into ultranationalism, and she continued to write and organise against the tide. For students of Japanese history, she offers a counterpoint to the dominant narrative of wartime Japan: a person who used language — both Japanese and Esperanto — as a tool for peace rather than propaganda.

She also matters for the history of Japanese feminism. Her activism linked gender equality to the broader struggle against militarism, a position that was radical in her time and remains relevant in discussions of how wartime states mobilise and oppress women.

The Name in Japanese

The Japanese name is 長谷川テル.

• Kana reading: はせがわ テル (Hasegawa Teru)
• Romaji: Hasegawa Teru

The family name is 長谷川, written with three kanji:

• 長 (はせ, hase) — meaning "long" or "leader." In this name, it contributes the sense of something extended or enduring. The character itself is common in Japanese names and carries the connotation of length in time or space.
• 谷 (や, ya) — meaning "valley." This is the same character used in words like 谷 (たに, tani), "valley." In the name, its reading shifts to や, a shortened form.
• 川 (がわ, gawa) — meaning "river." This is the standard character for river, as in 川 (かわ, kawa). The reading becomes voiced to がわ in compound position.

Together, 長谷川 literally suggests "long valley river," a common type of Japanese surname derived from geographic features. The name is historically associated with families from mountainous or riverine regions.

The given name テル is written in katakana, not kanji. This is unusual and significant. Katakana is normally used for foreign words, onomatopoeia, or emphasis, and its use here gives the name a modern, international feel. The sound テル (teru) is related to the verb 照る (てる, teru), meaning "to shine" or "to be sunny," though the katakana spelling deliberately avoids the kanji 照. The choice reflects her identity as an internationalist: her name is Japanese in sound but written in a script that signals openness to the world beyond Japan.

Her pen name, Verda Majo, is entirely in Esperanto. Verda means "green," the colour of Esperanto's flag and symbol, and Majo means "May," the month of spring and of international workers' solidarity. The name is a compact statement of her politics: green for the Esperanto movement, May for the cause of the working class.

Legacy

Hasegawa's legacy survives primarily through the Esperanto movement, which remembers her as one of its most dedicated Japanese voices. Her pen name, Verda Majo, is still recognised among Esperantists, and her writings are cited in histories of the Japanese left and of international pacifism.

In Japan, she is remembered as a figure of the Taishō and early Shōwa resistance, a woman who used her pen against the war when doing so carried real danger. Her death in China in 1947, just after the war's end, marks her as one of the many Japanese civilians whose lives were broken by the conflict they opposed.

For contemporary readers, her story is a reminder that the Japanese language was not only the language of empire and militarism. It was also the language of those who resisted, and Esperanto offered them a way to reach beyond the nation-state. Her name — both the Japanese 長谷川テル and the Esperanto Verda Majo — stands for that alternative history.