Ito Niizuma (, 5 August 1890 – 15 July 1963) was a Japanese politician. She was one of the first group of women elected to the House of Representatives in 1946.Otsuka Kiyoe (2008) Japanese Women's Legislative and Administrative Reforms in the Postwar Era Bulletin of the Faculty of Education, Kagoshima University
Biography Niizuma was born in Yokohama in 1890. She attended Yokohama English Commercial School, graduating in 1911. She then moved to San Francisco in the United States to study at a business college. She married journalist Kaoru Niizuma and joined a political study group led by Mosaburō Suzuki. During World War II she relocated to Hokkaido, where she worked for the Hokkaido Nichiyohin Katsuyo Kyokai in Sapporo. She also ran a typing school for girls and was part of the editorial committee of Katei Shinbun.
After the war, Niizuma contested the Hokkaido 1st district in the 1946 general elections as a Japan Socialist Party candidate, and was elected to the House of Representatives.Analysis of the 1946 Japanese General Election United States Department of State, 1946, p75 During her time in parliament she called for the introduction of paternity leave,Jap Urges Vacations For New Fathers Democrat and Chronicle, 12 July 1946 and was one of the speakers at the first public debate on sex education.Ugly Head Rears Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9 December 1946 She lost her seat in the 1947 elections and subsequently worked for the Ministry of Labour, in which she was the first head of the Boys and Women Division. She also became chair of the Women's Green Cross. She died in 1963.
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