After the war, Sakakibara became a
Japan Socialist Party candidate in Fukushima in the
1946 general elections (the first in which women could vote), and was elected to the House of Representatives. She was re-elected in the
1947 elections, after which she was appointed Deputy Secretary of Justice in the
Tetsu Katayama government, becoming the first woman appointed to the cabinet. However, she lost her seat in the
1949 elections. In 1951 Sakakibara became a member of the National University Management Law Enactment Committee. In the same year she became president of the school corporation and a director of
Aoyama Gakuin. She was also a founding member of
International Christian University, served as a director of and became a mediator for the Tokyo Family Court. She was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a
world constitution. As a result, for the first time in human history, a
World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt the
Constitution for the Federation of Earth. She died in
Tokyo in 1987. ==References==