12 Facts About Oku Mumeo

Mumeo Oku was an important Japanese feminist and politician who served three terms in Japan's Imperial Diet after having been a leader in the early modern women's suffrage movement in Japan.

Oku Mumeo played an important role in various early Japanese women's rights movements, and she was a crucial part of Japan's consumer movement.

Oku Mumeo was a renowned activist in the 1920s, co-founding the New Women's Association with Hiratsuka Raicho and Ichikawa Fusae, and eventually held a seat in the House of Councilors from 1947 to 1965 when she retired.

Oku Mumeo was born the eldest daughter of a third-generation blacksmith on October 24,1895, outside of Fukui.

Oku Mumeo's father disliked being a blacksmith and urged her to continually further her education.

Oku Mumeo's mother died of tuberculosis on November 3,1910, when she was still too young to remember much of her mother.

Oku Mumeo decided to further her education at the Japan Women's University in 1912.

Oku Mumeo's father died in the middle of February in 1918 at the age of forty-two.

Oku Mumeo would go on to dissolve the New Women's Associate on December 8,1922, and form the Women's League on the seventeenth of that same month.

Oku Mumeo married a man named Oku Eiichi, a poet who never really had much success and was employed in the translation department of Sakai Toshihiko's Baihunsha.

Oku Mumeo is survived by her son, Kyoichi Oku, and her daughter, Kii Nakamura, who, like her mother before her, served as chairman of the Housewives' Association.

Oku Mumeo died on July 7,1997, living to be a hundred and one years old.