AKIPRESS.COM - A former news anchor has struck a rare blow for Japanese women in public life by becoming the first female leader of the country’s biggest opposition party, The Guardian reports.

Renho Murata easily defeated her two rivals for the leadership of the left-of-center Democratic party on Thursday, hours after she sparked a minor controversy by revealing she still held dual Japanese and Taiwanese nationality despite insisting earlier that she had renounced the latter while in her teens.

The 48-year-old, who was born in Japan to a Taiwanese father and Japanese mother, is expected to give her party a temporary boost, following a run of poor election results.

Murata – known simply as Renho – said the party’s priority was to re-establish itself as a serious alternative to the Liberal Democratic party (LDP), which together with its junior coalition partner dominates both houses of parliament.

“From here on, we face a giant ruling party,” she said after the vote. “I’d like to call on everyone to join me in creating a party that does not criticize but makes proposals... so that one day we will become Japan’s choice.”

Murata, a former swimsuit model who worked as a journalist before being elected to parliament in 2004, seized the opportunity to lead the Democrats after the former leader, Katsuya Okada, said he was stepping down in the wake of the party’s poor performance in July’s upper house elections.

During its three years in government from 2009, the party was criticized for mishandling the planned relocation of a U.S. marine base on the southern island of Okinawa and for its response to the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011. The party, whose MPs include an uneasy mix of liberal and conservative defectors from other parties, has never recovered from its heavy general election defeat in late 2012.

During her leadership campaign, Murata vowed to protect the war-renouncing article of Japan’s postwar constitution, as speculation mounts that Abe will use his party’s big parliamentary majority to trigger changes that would end the military’s strictly defensive role.