Mio Sugita (杉田 水脈 Sugita Mio, born April 22, 1967) is a Japanese politician. She is a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan and incumbent member of the House of Representatives for the Proportional Chugoku Block. Sugita has been criticized for her conservative views, including comments against gender diversity and the LGBT community. She spoke out on a streamed program in 2015 that the LGBT community should not receive support from taxpayer's money, and repeated her claim in a monthly magazine piece in 2018. The Kishida cabinet appointed her for Internal Affairs and Communications in August 2022. She has since resigned from this position, because she had no intention of retracting some of her statements and to avoid disrupting administrative affairs, according to Kishida. When interviewed in that capacity, Sugita insisted that she had never dismissed diversity and had not discriminated against sexual minorities. Early life and education Sugita graduated from the Faculty of Agriculture, Tottori University in 1990. She worked as a Nishinomiya government employee and member of the Japan Restoration Party and the Next Generation Party before becoming a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan. After unsuccessfully running in the 2014 election for the Hyogo Prefectural 6th District (garnering the fewest votes of any candidate) as a member of The Party for Japanese Kokoro, Sugita changed parties, joining the Liberal Democratic Party. She next ran for the Proportional Chugoku Block as an LDP member, and was made a representative of that Block by the LDP, without having to rely directly on a direct election. Sugita married at age 26. Her husband is an engineer. They have one child, a daughter. Political career Women using maiden names A debate has been continuing in Japan on whether or not married couples should be allowed to retain their own names after marriage and thus have different surnames. At present, married people must share the same surname, whether the husband's name or the wife's maiden name. During a Diet session on January 23, 2020, when this issue was being debated, a female Diet member shouted out of turn (called a "yaji" in Japanese), "if you don’t want your husband’s name, you shouldn’t get married!" The Diet member was reported to have been Sugita. Nurseries In July 2016, Sugita wrote an article in the Sankei Shimbun opposing increases in the number of nurseries. Comfort women Sugita has called the