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.

Biography

Early years

Doi was born in

Hyōgo Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Hyōgo Prefecture has a population of 5,469,762 () and a geographic area of . Hyōgo Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture to the east, Osaka Prefecture to th ...

and graduated from

Doshisha University , also referred to as , is a private university in Kyoto, Japan. Established in 1875, it is one of Japan's oldest private institutions of higher learning, and has approximately 30,000 students enrolled on four campuses in Kyoto. It is one of Japa ...

, where she studied law. She was elected to the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entities. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often ...

, the lower house of the

Diet Diet may refer to: Food * Diet (nutrition), the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group * Dieting, the deliberate selection of food to control body weight or nutrient intake ** Diet food, foods that aid in creating a diet for weight loss ...

, as a member of the

Japan Socialist Party The was a major socialist and progressive political party in Japan which existed from 1945 to 1996. The party was the primary representative of the Japanese left and main opponent of the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party for most of its ex ...

(JSP) in 1969, representing the 2nd district of Hyōgo. She spent her first ten years in the House on the sidelines, but came to national attention in 1980 when she was highly critical of Japan's unequal treatment of women, specifically about women-only home economics degrees and the father-dominated family registration law. She pressured the Diet to sign the

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is an international treaty adopted in 1979 by the United Nations General Assembly. Described as an international bill of rights for women, it was instituted ...

(CEDAW) in 1985. 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 , combatant2 = , commander1 = , commander2 = , strength1 = Over 950,000 soldiers3,113 tanks1,800 aircraft2,200 artillery systems , page = https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-PEMD-96- ...

. 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 is a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1994 to 1996. He was the country's first socialist premier since Tetsu Katayama in 1948, and is best remembered for the Murayama Statement on the 50th anniversary of the end of ...

, 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 The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties Form ...

(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

Democratic Party of Japan The was a Centrism, centristThe Democratic Party of Japan was widely described as centrist: * * * * * * * to Centre-left politics, centre-left, Liberalism, liberal or Social liberalism, social-liberal List of political parties in Japan, ...

, and the SDP became a third-tier opposition party, watching its numbers steadily decline. The SDP was a minor party by the time the reality of the Japanese abductees taken by

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...

came to light in 2003. Doi's status plummeted as her earlier statements telling abductee families to "get over it" were shown on television, as was Doi's comment in

Pyongyang Pyongyang () is the Capital city, capital and largest city of North Korea, where it is sometimes labeled as the "Capital of the Revolution" (). Pyongyang is located on the Taedong River about upstream from its mouth on the Yellow Sea. Accordi ...

in 1987 at the birthday party of

Kim Il Sung Kim Il Sung (born Kim Song Ju; 15 April 1912 – 8 July 1994) was a North Korean politician and the founder of North Korea, which he led as its first Supreme Leader (North Korean title), supreme leader from North Korea#Founding, its establishm ...

: "We JSP members respect the glorious success of DPRK under the great leader Kim Il Sung." Doi apologized to the families and claimed that North Korean authorities had been deceiving her all along, but resigned the party leadership soon after. In 1989, Doi, together with

Naoto Kan is a Japanese former politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) from June 2010 to September 2011. Kan was the first Prime Minister since the resignation of Junichiro Koizumi in 2006 to ...

, Keiko Chiba,

and other 129 Japanese politicians from Japan Socialist Party, Socialist Democratic Federation and

Komeito , formerly New Komeito (NKP) and commonly referred to as simply Komei, is a political party in Japan founded by the leader of Soka Gakkai, Daisaku Ikeda, in 1964. It is generally considered centrist and socially conservative. Since 2012, i ...

signed a petition to the

South Korean President The president of the Republic of Korea (), also known as the president of South Korea (), is the head of state and head of government of South Korea. The president directs the executive branch of the government and is the commander-in-chief of ...

Roh Tae-woo Roh Tae-woo (, ; 4 December 1932 – 26 October 2021) was a South Korean army general and politician who served as the sixth president of South Korea from 1988 to 1993. In 1987, he became the first president to be directly elected under the cur ...

for the release of North Korean spies including Sin Gwang-su who had kidnapped a Japanese person in June 1980.

Loss of seats

Doi lost her directly elected seat in the House of Representatives in the 2003 election but remained in the House, having won a seat under the proportional representation system. She lost this seat in 2005 elections.

Death

She died in a hospital in Hyogo Prefecture of

pneumonia Pneumonia is an Inflammation, inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as Pulmonary alveolus, alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of Cough#Classification, productive or dry cough, ches ...

on 20 September 2014, at the age of 85.

References

On the North Korea Question An interview with Fuwa Tetsuzo, JCP Central Committee Chair, Japan Press Weekly, January 2004 , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Doi, Takako 1928 births 2014 deaths People from Kobe Doshisha University alumni Scholars of constitutional law Japan Socialist Party politicians Social Democratic Party (Japan) politicians Women members of the House of Representatives (Japan) Speakers of the House of Representatives (Japan) 21st-century Japanese women politicians Women opposition leaders Women legal scholars Politicians from Hyōgo Prefecture Deaths from pneumonia in Japan Members of the House of Representatives (Japan) 2003–2005