Chikage Ogi Passed Away – Her Brilliant Life as a Politician and a Wife of Nashien

The Kabuki-za announced that Chikage Ogi (real name Hiroko Hayashi), a former Takarazuka actress and the first female politician to serve as Speaker of the House of Councillors, died of esophago-gastric junction cancer at a university hospital in Tokyo on March 9 at the age of 89.

After graduating from Hyogo Prefectural Kobe High School, Hyogo Prefecture’s most prestigious preparatory school, she was accepted to Takarazuka Music School after a friend sent in her application without her permission, and went on to become an actress. (later to become a living national treasure, Sakata Tojuro) at the age of 27. She became the wife of a nashien (a Japanese pear orchard), which kept her away from acting.

After only one year, she returned to acting and appeared in numerous dramas and films, and from 1973 she hosted Fuji Television’s popular wide-ranging show “3 o’clock You” and gained the support of housewives. At the request of Takeo Fukuda, then president of the Liberal Democratic Party, and Masayoshi Ohira, then secretary general of the party, she was nominated by the LDP as a candidate for the House of Councillors and ran for office. He was elected with flying colors, but at the time he was just one of the celebrity members of the House of Councillors.

On March 31, 1994, when he left the LDP, he told this magazine, “The LDP is splitting up.

The LDP will split. The LDP will split. The ruling party is still in the doldrums, and the Diet members have no intention of changing their mindset. The strategy of holding the budget hostage to pursue the prime minister’s suspicions is the same one we have been criticizing for so long!

He added angrily. Later, he joined the Shinsei Party, which was founded by Ichiro Ozawa, but parted company with Ozawa in 2000 to form the Conservative Party, of which he was the first leader. He became the first leader of the Conservative Party, and in the second Mori Cabinet in 2000, he made his first cabinet appointment as Minister of Construction and Director General of the National Land Agency. She also served as Minister of Transportation and the first Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, and in 2004 became the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House of Councillors. She retired from politics in 2007.

She is said to have fulfilled her role as a wife in the Ewen family even while she was active as a politician, so she is a very powerful person. I don’t think she ever thought of walking three steps behind him as a wife (laughs). She also controlled her husband, Tojuro, very well.

In 2002, the public was surprised by Ogi’s handling of her husband’s affairs as a wife in the nashien, when this magazine scooped her about her husband Fujijuro’s (Nakamura Ganjiro III at that time) affair. Fujjuro had been meeting with a beautiful maiko in Kyoto day after day. In a direct interview with this magazine, Fujijuro said.

I am happy to be reported like this even though I am 70 years old. I hope men in the world will do their best, too.

Mr. Ogi, who was Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism at the time, responded to the magazine’s direct question, “I don’t mind at all.

I don’t mind at all. （I don’t mind at all.

He responded, “I don’t mind at all. Their stock soared with this response. In February 2006, Mr. Ogi responded in an interview with Sankei Shimbun as follows.

On “Tetsuko’s Interview” (a TV Asahi talk show), I was asked if I would choose my husband if I were to marry again. My husband had many rumors about women, and at the time I said, ‘No.’ But he was very kind to me when I was sick. But he was very kind to me when I was sick, so last March, when we appeared as a couple, I said to Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, ‘I have changed my mind.

Mr. Ogi led a bold and brilliant life right up to the end. Now I just want to pray for her soul rest in peace.