Yoshiko Mibuchi

Yoshiko Mibuchi, who lived from November 13, 1914, to May 28, 1984, was a Japanese lawyer and judge who was one of the first three women in Japan to pass the bar examination, in 1938, alongside Masako Nakata and Ai Kume, all three having studied at the Women College of Meiji University; after an eighteen-month internship the three became Japan first fully qualified female lawyers in 1940. In 1949, following the postwar constitution reforms, Mibuchi became one of the first two women appointed judges in Japan, and in 1952 she became the first female judge at the Nagoya District Court. In 1972 she became the first female chief judge of a family court in Niigata Prefecture, capping a career that began under a legal system that, before 1933, had formally restricted the profession to male Japanese nationals.