Japan New Party in the context of "Kumamoto Prefecture"

Yoshihiko Noda (Japanese: 野田 佳彦, Hepburn: Noda Yoshihiko; born 20 May 1957) is a Japanese politician. He is the current leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP), and has been a member of the House of Representatives since 2000. He served as the Prime Minister of Japan from 2011 to 2012.

Noda entered politics in 1993 as a member of the now-defunct Japan New Party. In 1996, he joined the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). After the DPJ won control of the Diet in 2009 general election, Noda was named a senior vice minister of finance in the cabinet of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, and in 2010, was named minister of finance in the cabinet of Prime Minister Naoto Kan. Following Kan's resignation as prime minister, Noda won the ensuing leadership election and was appointed prime minister on 2 September 2011.

General elections were held in Japan on 18 July 1993 to elect the 511 members of the House of Representatives. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which had been in power since 1955, lost their majority in the House. An eight-party coalition government was formed and headed by Morihiro Hosokawa, the leader of the Japan New Party (JNP). The election result was profoundly important to Japan's domestic and foreign affairs.

It marked the first time under the 1955 System that the ruling coalition had been defeated, being replaced by a rainbow coalition of liberals, centrists and reformists. The change in government also marked a change in generational politics and political conduct; the election was widely seen as a backlash against corruption, pork-barrel spending and an inflated bureaucracy. Proposed electoral reforms also held much influence over the election. Eleven months after the election, with the electoral reform legislation that was its raison d'être passed, the eight-party coalition collapsed. This was the last general election to use the single non-transferable vote electoral system, with the 1994 electoral reform efforts changing the system to parallel voting starting with the next election.