Irina Khakamada - Overview

Irina Mutsuovna Khakamada (Russian: Ири́на Муцу́овна Хакама́да, IPA: [ɪˈrʲinə mʊˈtsuəvnə xəkɐˈmadə], Japanese: イリーナ・ハカマダ, born April 13, 1955 in Moscow) is a Russian politician who ran in the Russian presidential election, 2004. Khakamada was born to a Japanese father, Mutsuo Hakamada, a communist who defected to the Soviet Union in 1939, and Nina Sinelnikova, who is of Russian and Armenian roots, schoolteacher who lost her father to the Stalinist purges and her mother to suicide following the family's forced relocation to Khabarovsk. Her paternal uncle is Satomi Hakamada (袴田 里見), a longtime member of the Japanese Communist Party leadership. The Russia expert and Aoyama Gakuin University political science professor Shigeki Hakamada is her half-brother. In Kanji, her family name is 袴田; in katakana, her name is イリーナ・ハカマダ.