Tenkoko Sonoda

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.

Political career

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.