is a

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

ese politician and the current governor of

Shiga Prefecture is a landlocked prefecture of Japan in the Kansai region of Honshu. Shiga Prefecture has a population of 1,398,972 as of 1 February 2025 and has a geographic area of . Shiga Prefecture borders Fukui Prefecture to the north, Gifu Prefecture to th ...

, having been elected to the position in July 2014. He previously served in the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entities. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often ...

in the

Diet Diet may refer to: Food * Diet (nutrition), the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group * Dieting, the deliberate selection of food to control body weight or nutrient intake ** Diet food, foods that aid in creating a diet for weight loss ...

(national legislature) as a member of the

Democratic Party of Japan The was a Centrism, centristThe Democratic Party of Japan was widely described as centrist: * * * * * * * to Centre-left politics, centre-left, Liberalism, liberal or Social liberalism, social-liberal List of political parties in Japan, ...

Career

A native of Otsu,

, Mikazuki joined the

West Japan Railway Company , also referred to as , is one of the Japan Railways Group (JR Group) companies and operates in western Honshu. It has its headquarters in Kita-ku, Osaka. It is listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange, is a constituent of the TOPIX Large70 index, ...

in 1994 after graduating from

Hitotsubashi University , formerly known as , is a national university, national research university in Tokyo, Japan. Often regarded as Japan’s foremost institution for the study of the social sciences, particularly commerce, economics, law, political science, sociolog ...

's Faculty of Economics. From 1999 he was the chairman of the "young and women employees" committee of both the West Japan Railway Trade Union and Japan Railway Trade Unions Confederation. In 2002 he resigned from JR West to study at the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management.

National Diet

Mikazuki entered the

as a member of the

after winning the Shiga No.3 District in the 2003 general election. At the 2005 general election he survived the "hurricane" victory by

Junichiro Koizumi Junichiro Koizumi ( ; , ''Koizumi Jun'ichirō'' ; born 8 January 1942) is a Japanese retired politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) ...

's ruling

Liberal Democratic Party Several political parties from around the world have been called the Liberal Democratic Party, Democratic Liberal Party or Liberal Democrats. These parties have usually followed liberalism as ideology, although they can vary widely from very progr ...

, retaining his seat by a margin of 266 votes (0.17%) over LDP candidate Osamu Uno. At the August 2009 election a landslide victory by the Democratic Party brought the party to power under Prime Minister

Yukio Hatoyama is a Japanese retired politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and Leader of the Democratic Party of Japan from 2009 to 2010. He was the first Prime Minister from the modern Democratic Party of Japan. First elected to the House of Repre ...

. Mikazuki retained his seat, this time receiving 60.8% of the vote and defeating Uno by more than 49,000 votes. Mikazuki was made a Vice-Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism in Hatoyama's cabinet and was promoted to Senior Vice-Minister when

Naoto Kan is a Japanese former politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) from June 2010 to September 2011. Kan was the first Prime Minister since the resignation of Junichiro Koizumi in 2006 to ...

became Prime Minister in June 2010. He lost his position in the cabinet in a September 2010 shuffle and was instead appointed deputy chairman of the party's national policy committee. At the 2012 general election that returned the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to power, Mikazuki lost his district seat to LDP candidate Nobuhide Takamura but remained in the House by winning one of the Kinki Proportional Representation Block seats. He resigned from the Diet in May 2014 to contest the Shiga gubernatorial election in July. He was replaced in the Diet by DPJ member Tatsuo Kawabata, who had lost his Shiga No.4 District seat in the 2012 election but failed to secure a proportional block seat.

Governor of Shiga Prefecture

Mikazuki won the

Shiga is a landlocked prefecture of Japan in the Kansai region of Honshu. Shiga Prefecture has a population of 1,398,972 as of 1 February 2025 and has a geographic area of . Shiga Prefecture borders Fukui Prefecture to the north, Gifu Prefecture to t ...

gubernatorial election in July 2014 with 46.3% of the vote, defeating the second-placed Takashi Koyari by 13,000 votes.

References

External links

Official website
in Japanese. 1971 births Living people People from Ōtsu, Shiga Hitotsubashi University alumni Democratic Party of Japan politicians Governors of Shiga Prefecture Politicians from Shiga Prefecture Members of the House of Representatives (Japan) 2012–2014 {{Japan-politician-1970s-stub