was a bureaucrat with the

Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare The is a cabinet level ministry of the Japanese government. It is commonly known as in Japan. The ministry provides services on health, labour and welfare. It was formed with the merger of the former Ministry of Health and Welfare or and the ...

and served as a Supreme Court Justice of Japan. She was awarded an

Order of the Sacred Treasure The is a Japanese order, established on 4 January 1888 by Emperor Meiji as the Order of Meiji. Originally awarded in eight classes (from 8th to 1st, in ascending order of importance), since 2003 it has been awarded in six classes, the lowest ...

, 1st class.

Early life and education

Takahashi was born in

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of To ...

on September 21, 1927. She graduated from

Ochanomizu University is a women's university in the Ōtsuka neighborhood of Bunkyō-ku, Tokyo, Japan. Ochanomizu University is one of the top national universities in Japan. Ochanomizu is the name of a Tokyo neighborhood where the university was founded. Hi ...

, then studied in

Tokyo University , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...

's economics department.

Career

After graduating in 1953, she started working for the

. She was assigned to the Women's Bureau, where she was chief of employment statistics. She was later reassigned to the Women and Youth Bureau. There she found that women did menial chores in the department, and evidence of other gender discrimintation. This inspired her to advocate for

gender equality Gender equality, also known as sexual equality or equality of the sexes, is the state of equal ease of access to resources and opportunities regardless of gender, including economic participation and decision-making; and the state of valuing d ...

. Takahashi left public service in 1982. Takahashi spent the next few years working as the director of the Asian Women’s Interchange Research Forum and the president of the 21st Century Occupational Foundation. She the became the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Japan on February 9, 1994 by Prime Minister

Morihiro Hosokawa is a Japanese politician and Nobility, noble who was Prime Minister of Japan from 1993 to 1994, leading a coalition government which was the first non-Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government of Japan since 1955 ...

. She did not have a degree in law. Takahashi's term on the Supreme Court ended on September 20, 1997 when she reached the obligatory retirement age of 70. Takahashi was awarded an Order of the Sacred Treasure in 2000. She died on December 21, 2013 at 86 years old.

Major Supreme Court cases

* 1995 –

Lockheed bribery scandal The Lockheed bribery scandals encompassed a series of bribes and contributions made by officials of U.S. aerospace company Lockheed from the late 1950s to the 1970s in the process of negotiating the sale of aircraft. The scandal caused consid ...

;

apportionment The legal term apportionment (french: apportionement; Mediaeval Latin: , derived from la, portio, share), also called delimitation, is in general the distribution or allotment of proper shares, though may have different meanings in different c ...

of the

1993 Japanese general election General elections were held in Japan on 18 July 1993 to elect the 511 members of the House of Representatives. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which had been in power since 1955, lost their majority in the House. An eight-party coalition gov ...

Selected works

References

2013 deaths 1927 births People from Kitakyushu Ochanomizu University alumni University of Tokyo alumni Recipients of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, 1st class Supreme Court of Japan justices {{DEFAULTSORT:Takahashi, Hisako