was one of the first three women in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

to become lawyers.

Biography

Yoshiko Mibuchi, sometimes given as Yoshiko Sanfuchi was born Yoshiko Mutoh in

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

on January 30, 1914. At the time the definition of someone who could enter the modern legal profession in Japan was "A Male Japanese national" who must be at least twenty years old. This wasn't amended until 1933. It was 1936 before women were allowed enter the bar. So it was then that women began to take the exam for entrance to the bar. Mibuchi was one of the first three women, including

Masako Nakata , nee (December 1, 1910 – October 15, 2002) was one of Japan's first women lawyers. Biography Masako Tanaka was born and raised in Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo on December 1, 1910. Her father Kunijiro was a major at Military Police who loved reading W ...

and

Ai Kume was one of the first three women in Japan to become lawyers. Biography Kume was born in Ōsaka Prefecture. At the time, the definition of someone who could enter the modern legal profession in Japan was "A male Japanese national" who must be at ...

, to pass the exam in 1938. The women were about to study law from 1929 at Women's College, Meiji University. All three became fully qualified lawyers after an eighteen-month internship, in 1940. Mibuchi became one of the first two women judges in 1949 after the new constitution. She was the first woman judge in the Nagoya District Court in 1952. In 1972 Mibuchi went on to be the first woman chief judge of the

Niigata Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture in the Chūbu region of Honshu of Japan. Niigata Prefecture has a population of 2,227,496 (1 July 2019) and is the List of Japanese prefectures by area, fifth-largest prefecture of Japan by geographic area ...

family court. She died November 13, 1984.

References

1914 births 1984 deaths People from Singapore Japanese women lawyers 20th-century Japanese lawyers Japanese women judges Meiji University alumni {{Lawyer-stub