Chiba 4th district is a constituency of the House of Representatives

House of Representatives of Japan

The is the lower house of the Diet of Japan. The House of Councillors of Japan is the upper house.The House of Representatives has 480 members, elected for a four-year term. Of these, 180 members are elected from 11 multi-member constituencies by a party-list system of proportional representation,...

 in the Diet of Japan

Diet of Japan

The is Japan's bicameral legislature. It is composed of a lower house, called the House of Representatives, and an upper house, called the House of Councillors. Both houses of the Diet are directly elected under a parallel voting system. In addition to passing laws, the Diet is formally...

 (national legislature). It is located in Western Chiba

Chiba Prefecture

is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region and the Greater Tokyo Area. Its capital is Chiba City.- History :Chiba Prefecture was established on June 15, 1873 with the merger of Kisarazu Prefecture and Inba Prefecture...

 and covers the city of Funabashi

Funabashi, Chiba

is a city located in northwestern Chiba Prefecture, Japan. As of February 2011, the city had an estimated population of 609,157 and a population density of 7110 persons per km². The total area was 85.64 km². It is the 7th most populous city in Greater Tokyo....

. As of 2009, 489,246 eligible voters were registered in the district making it in the 2009 general election the district with the lowest electoral weight throughout Japan at 2.31 times as many voters as the district with the highest electoral weight, Kōchi 3.

Before the electoral reform of 1994, Funabashi was part of Chiba 1st district

Chiba 1st district (1947–1993)

Chiba 1st district was a constituency of the House of Representatives in the Diet of Japan. Between 1947 and 1993 it elected initially four, later five Representatives by single non-transferable vote. It was located in Chiba and, as of 1993, consisted of the cities of Chiba , Funabashi, Yachiyo,...

 where four Representatives had been elected by single non-transferable vote

Single non-transferable vote

The single non-transferable vote or SNTV is an electoral system used in multi-member constituency elections.- Voting :In any election, each voter casts one vote for one candidate in a multi-candidate race for multiple offices. Posts are filled by the candidates with the most votes...

.

Democrat Yoshihiko Noda

Yoshihiko Noda

is the current Prime Minister of Japan, a member of the Democratic Party of Japan , and a member of the House of Representatives in the Diet...

 has represented Chiba 4th district since 2000 after initially losing it as a candidate for the New Frontier Party

New Frontier Party

The was a Japanese political party that existed during the mid-1990s. As a merger of several small parties, the party was ideologically diverse, with its membership ranging from moderate socialists to neoliberals and conservatives...

 by 105 votes to Liberal Democrat Shōichi Tanaka in 1996.

List of Representatives

Representative	Party		Dates	Notes
Shōichi Tanaka		LDP Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) The , frequently abbreviated to LDP or , is a centre-right political party in Japan. It is one of the most consistently successful political parties in the democratic world. The LDP ruled almost continuously for nearly 54 years from its founding in 1955 until its defeat in the 2009 election...	1996 – 2000
Yoshihiko Noda Yoshihiko Noda is the current Prime Minister of Japan, a member of the Democratic Party of Japan , and a member of the House of Representatives in the Diet...		DPJ Democratic Party of Japan The is a political party in Japan founded in 1998 by the merger of several opposition parties. Its socially liberal platform is generally considered center-left in the Japanese political spectrum...	2000 –	Incumbent

Election results

In 2009, Yoshihiko Noda's candidacy was formally supported by the People's New Party, Mikio Fujita by the Justice Party.