(January 6, 1945 - November 29, 2020) was a Japanese

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, a ...

of the

New Komeito Party , 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 ...

who served as a member of the

House of Councillors The is the upper house of the National Diet of Japan. The House of Representatives is the lower house. The House of Councillors is the successor to the pre-war House of Peers. If the two houses disagree on matters of the budget, treaties, ...

in 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 ...

(national legislature) from 1992 to 2010. She was born in

Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the n ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

(then under Japanese administration) and graduated from

Keio University , mottoeng = The pen is mightier than the sword , type = Private research coeducational higher education institution , established = 1858 , founder = Yukichi Fukuzawa , endowmen ...

in 1967. She passed the bar examination on her third attempt in 1969 and was admitted to the bar in 1972. She was elected for the first time in

1992 File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: 1992 Los Angeles riots, Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the Police brutality, police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment buildi ...

as a representative of Tokyo in the House of Councillors. In the 2004 election she switched to the national proportional representation slate. From January to November 1998, she served as the president of the

. She announced her retirement from politics at the end of 2009, which became effective following the 2010 election. In 2002, she proposed a bill to create an enhanced version of life imprisonment for serious offenses, with the ultimate goal of sparking debate about the abolition of the

death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

in Japan. She was co-managing partner of the law firm of Hamayotsu & Hamayotsu in Kojimachi, Tokyo. In 2011, she became an adjunct professor of law at Soka University. On February 16, 2023, Komeito announced that Hamayotsu died in November 2020 at age 75.

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* Government ministers of Japan Members of the House of Councillors (Japan) Women government ministers of Japan Female members of the House of Councillors (Japan) Japanese women lawyers Keio University alumni Politicians from Taipei 1945 births Living people New Komeito politicians 20th-century Japanese lawyers 21st-century Japanese lawyers 20th-century women lawyers 21st-century women lawyers Members of Sōka Gakkai {{Japan-politician-1940s-stub