The Japanese Communist Party appointed policy chief Tomoko Tamura to be its new chairperson on Thursday, making her the first woman to take the helm of the party.
Tamura replaces Kazuo Shii, who had led the party since November 2000. The appointment was endorsed on the final day of the four-day party congress held in Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture in central Japan.
Tamura, a 58-year-old House of Councillors lawmaker who was elected to parliament in 2010, became the first female policy chief of the party at the previous congress in 2020.
Shii, who will become the JCP Central Committee chairman, was appointed the JCP's youngest secretariat head in 1990, and has long played a key role. But calls had been growing for a new generation of leadership, political experts said.
Shii, a House of Representatives lawmaker, came under scrutiny last year, when the JCP excluded two party members who openly criticized his long-running dominance and called for a leadership election system.
Meanwhile, Tetsuzo Fuwa, a former chief of the JCP, retired from the central committee and became an honorary executive officer with no decision-making rights.
Known as the JCP's "theoretical pillar," the 93-year-old served as party chief twice between 1982 and 1987 as well as between 1989 and 2000, before becoming the Central Committee chairman.
