Tenkoko Sonoda

Tenkoko Sonoda
Sonoda in 1949
Member of the House of Representatives
In office 1946–1947
Constituency	Tokyo 2nd district
In office 1947–1952
Constituency	Tokyo 7th district
Personal details
Born	23 January 1919 Tokyo, Japan
Died	29 January 2015(2015-01-29) (aged 96) Tokyo, Japan

Tenkōkō Sonoda (園田 天光光, Sonoda Tenkōkō, 23 January 1919 – 29 January 2015) was a Japanese politician who was a member of the Japanese Diet from 1946–1952. In 1950, she became the first woman in Japanese political history to have a baby while in office.

Biography

Sonoda was born in Tokyo on 23 January 1919.

Tenkoko Sonoda was the widow of Minister for Foreign Affairs Sunao Sonoda. She was the step-mother to Hiroyuki Sonoda. She was a socialist at first, and belonged to the Japan Socialist Party (the Social Democratic Party Japan; SDPJ) and the Workers and Farmers Party (Maoism) in the Diet, but changed her opinion by herself to be conservative after her marriage to Sunao.

She was a member of the representative committee of the openly revisionist lobby Nippon Kaigi, to which her son-in-law Hiroyuki is also affiliated.

Sonoda died on 29 January 2015 at the age of 96.

Sources

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0XPQ/is_2000_April_17/ai_61968766