After graduating in 1920 Mumeo Oku worked in a clothing factory and helped to run a home for poor women.

ECONOMIST: Mumeo Oku

In old age, Mrs Oku said women should have done better.

ECONOMIST: Mumeo Oku

Mrs Oku set out to prod them into action with consumerism.

ECONOMIST: Mumeo Oku

Coast Guard official Yasuhiko Oku said the captain had admitted being inside Japan's exclusive economic zone when he was stopped on Saturday, the Associated Press reports.

BBC: Japan frees crew of 'illegal' Chinese fishing boat

Oku-noto no Aenokoto is an agricultural ritual transmitted from generation to generation by the rice farmers of the Noto Peninsula, which projects from Ishikawa prefecture in the centre of Japan s main island, Honshu.

UNESCO: Culture

In her three six-year terms Mrs Oku used her position in parliament to gain attention to a string of faulty products: clothing that shrank, meat products that lacked meat, all things readily appreciated by ordinary women.

ECONOMIST: Mumeo Oku

Performed with individual variations throughout the region, Oku-noto no Aenokoto reflects the everyday culture of the Japanese, who have cultivated rice since ancient times, and serves as a marker of identity for the area s farmers.

UNESCO: Culture

Mrs Oku was saddened but not dismayed.

ECONOMIST: Mumeo Oku

The bodies of Katsuhiko Oku, 45, who worked for the Japanese Embassy in London and who had been in Iraq for several months, and Masamori Inoue, 30, who worked for the Japanese Embassy in Baghdad, arrived in Tokyo on Thursday.

CNN: Japan: Diplomats shot in vehicles

Mrs Oku had two children.

ECONOMIST: Mumeo Oku