Fuki Kushida; Prominent Japanese Advocate of Women’s Rights, Peace

Fuki Kushida, a leading women’s rights and peace activist, has died.

Kushida died Monday at the age of 101.

A native of Yamaguchi Prefecture, the soft-spoken Kushida was widowed at 35. The mother of two children and began working as an insurance agent and a magazine reporter.

After World War II, she joined the Women’s Democratic Club and became active in the feminist movement.

Living through three wars--the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, World War I and World War II--caused her to become a peace activist.

She was also a committed feminist and, in 1946, became the first secretary general of the Women’s Democratic Club, which became a leading feminist and peace movement.

She was one of the founders and an early president of the Federation of Japanese Women’s Organizations. The federation, with more than 900,000 members, has appealed for the elimination of nuclear weapons and worked for world peace and gender equality.

In 1995, she was one of a group of Japanese women who ran a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for the removal of all U.S. military bases in Japan, citing the crimes committed by servicemen against Japanese civilians, mainly women.

At the age of 99 and in a wheelchair, Kushida led about 2,000 people in Tokyo in a protest against stronger Japan-U.S. defense ties.