Takako Doi

Takako Doi
Speaker of the House of Representatives
In office 6 August 1993 – 27 September 1996
Monarch	Akihito
Deputy	Hyōsuke Kujiraoka
Preceded by	Yoshio Sakurauchi
Succeeded by	Sōichirō Itō
Chairwoman of the Social Democratic Party
In office 9 September 1986 – 31 July 1991
Preceded by	Masashi Ishibashi
Succeeded by	Makoto Tanabe
In office 28 September 1996 – 15 November 2003
Preceded by	Tomiichi Murayama
Succeeded by	Mizuho Fukushima
Member of the House of Representatives
In office 27 December 1969 – 11 September 2005
Personal details
Born	(1928-11-30)November 30, 1928 Japanese Socialist Party

Takako Doi (土井 たか子, Doi Takako, November 30, 1928 – September 20, 2014) was a prominent Japanese politician from 1980 until her retirement in 2005. She was the first female Lower House Speaker in Japan, the highest position a female politician has ever held in the country's modern history, as well as the country's first female Opposition Leader.^[1]

Biography

Early years

Doi was born in

Doi became Vice Chair of the JSP in 1983 and the first female leader of a political party division in Japanese history in 1986, as chair of the JSP Central Policy Division. The JSP took a record high number of seats in 1990, when it won 136 seats in the House of Representatives, partly because of Doi's popularity, but she resigned her party post in 1991, in the wake of the Gulf War.

In 1994, no party held a majority in the House and the JSP took the lead in forming a coalition government. The JSP's president, Tomiichi Murayama, became Prime Minister. However, the coalition collapsed in 1996 and, following a disastrous electoral defeat for the JSP later that year, Doi returned to lead the party.

Party leader

Doi was a popular opposition politician, but as party leader she saw her party collapse. Her chief act as leader was to rename the JSP as the Social Democratic Party (SDP), in 1996. Moderating the characters for "Socialism" by adding "Democratic" to the party name, Doi said that she wanted to form a more moderate party and bring more women into politics. Doi was responsible for recruiting young women with grass-roots activist backgrounds, such as Kiyomi Tsujimoto, into the party.

In 1998, former members of the JSP and of other parties formed the

She died in a hospital in Hyogo Prefecture of pneumonia on September 20, 2014, at the age of 85.^[3][4]

References

• [1]
• [2]
• [3] On the North Korea Question An interview with Fuwa Tetsuzo, JCP Central Committee Chair, Japan Press Weekly, January 2004

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House of Representatives of Japan
Preceded by Yoshio Sakurauchi	Speaker of the House of Representatives of Japan 1993–1996	Succeeded by Soichiro Ito
Party political offices
Preceded by Tomiichi Murayama	Chair of the Social Democratic Party of Japan 1996–2003	Succeeded by Mizuho Fukushima
Preceded by Masashi Ishibashi	Chair of the Japan Socialist Party 1986–1991	Succeeded by Makoto Tanabe