Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Tanaka Makiko (b. 1944) is a Japanese politican, the daughter of former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei. She attended high school in the United States and graduated from Waseda University. She spent most of her early adulthood working with her father's famous Etsuzankai organization, and was elected to the Diet in 1993, shortly after her father's final fall from power. She was the first female foreign minister of Japan, from April 2001 to January 2002, but was fired from the cabinet after making remarks critical of Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro. Later that year, she was kicked out of the ruling LDP and barred from party membership for two years. In August of 2002, Tanaka resigned from the Diet over allegations that she had embezzled her secretaries' civil service salaries. A Tokyo court cleared her in September, and she ran for the Diet again as an independent in November. She is now in close alliance with the Democratic Party of Japan. She kept her maiden name after marrying Suzuki Naoki in 1969. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.