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

and graduated from

Doshisha University , mottoeng = Truth shall make you free , tagline = , established = Founded 1875,Chartered 1920 , vision = , type = Private , affiliation = , calendar = , endowment = €1 ...

, 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 entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...

, 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 socialist and progressive political party in Japan that existed from 1945 to 1996. The party was founded as the Social Democratic Party of Japan by members of several proletarian parties that existed before World War II, including ...

(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 (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 The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: ...

. 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 led the Japanese Socialist Party, and was responsible for changing its name to the Social Democratic Party (Japan), Social Democratic Party of Japan in 1996. Up ...

, 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 For ...

(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 is a Japanese politician from the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, and formerly other incarnations of Japanese center-left and social democratic parties. She is a member of the House of Representatives from the 10th District of Osaka. T ...

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

Democratic Party of Japan The was a centristThe Democratic Party of Japan was widely described as centrist: * * * * * * * to centre-left liberal or social-liberal political party in Japan from 1998 to 2016. The party's origins lie in the previous Democratic Part ...

, 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 shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu River, Y ...

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 and largest city of North Korea, where it is known as the "Capital of the Revolution". Pyongyang is located on the Taedong River about upstream from its mouth on the Yellow Sea. According to the 2008 populatio ...

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 ruled from the country's establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994. He held the posts of ...

: "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 politician who was 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 serve for m ...

Keiko Chiba is a former justice minister of Japan. Former career After graduating from Chuo University in 1971, where she studied law, she became a lawyer in 1982. She belongs to the Yokohama Bar Association. As a lawyer, she was involved in a lawsuit f ...

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

Komeito , formerly New Komeito and abbreviated NKP, is a conservative political party in Japan founded by lay members of the Buddhist Japanese new religious movement Soka Gakkai in 1964. Since 2012, it has served in government as the junior coalitio ...

signed a petition to the

South Korean President The president of the Republic of Korea (), also known as the president of South Korea (often abbreviated to POTROK or POSK; ), is the head of state and head of government of the Republic of Korea. The president leads the State Council, and is ...

Roh Tae-woo Roh Tae-woo (; ; 4 December 1932 – 26 October 2021) was a South Korean politician and army general who served as the sixth president of South Korea from 1988 to 1993. Roh was a close ally and friend of Chun Doo-hwan, the predecessor leader ...

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 inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severity ...

on September 20, 2014, at the age of 85.Takako Doi obituary
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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 Social Democratic Party (Japan) politicians Female members of the House of Representatives (Japan) Members of the House of Representatives (Japan) Speakers of the House of Representatives (Japan) 21st-century Japanese politicians 21st-century Japanese women politicians Women opposition leaders Women legal scholars Politicians from Hyōgo Prefecture Deaths from pneumonia in Japan