lit a candle 5h agoMy dad called me about this, he'd seen a clip years ago of Yamazaki presiding over the upper house and just thought the gavel ritual was the coolest thing. 84 years old, still in his seat. Didn't know the name till today but my dad sure did.
Their story
Masaaki Yamazaki was a Japanese politician from Fukui Prefecture who rose from a small town council to become president of the House of Councillors, the upper house of the National Diet. A member of the Liberal Democratic Party, he represented the Fukui at large district for more than three decades…
Masaaki Yamazaki was a Japanese politician from Fukui Prefecture who rose from a small town council to become president of the House of Councillors, the upper house of the National Diet. A member of the Liberal Democratic Party, he represented the Fukui at large district for more than three decades and was the oldest sitting member of the chamber when he died in the early hours of 13 November 2026, aged 84.
He was born on 24 May 1942 in the village of Nishitani in Ono district, Fukui, an area now part of the city of Ono. He graduated in 1965 from the political science and economics course of the law faculty at Nihon University and worked for Yamazaki Kensetsu Kogyo, a construction company, before entering politics.
His public career began in 1975, when he won a seat on the Ono city council. Four years later he was elected to the Fukui Prefectural Assembly, where he served four terms, becoming vice speaker in 1985 and speaker from 1991 to 1992. In July 1992 he was elected to the House of Councillors for Fukui and went on to win six elections in all, the last in 2022, when he held the seat by about 13,000 votes after earlier landslides of more than 200,000.
In the Diet he served as parliamentary vice minister of finance in the first Hashimoto cabinet in 1996 and chaired the upper house committee on rules and administration. From 2003 to 2005 he was deputy chief cabinet secretary for political affairs under Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. In 2007 he became secretary general of the LDP in the House of Councillors, stepping down in 2009 for health reasons. He was elected vice president of the chamber in December 2012 and president in August 2013, the first Diet member elected from Fukui to hold the post, serving until July 2016. As president he led parliamentary visits abroad, including to Latvia, Estonia and Mexico, and in 2014 he was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Orange-Nassau by the Netherlands.
A conservative, he supported revision of the constitution and belonged to the Nippon Kaigi Diet group and other right wing parliamentary leagues. In later years he faced press criticism for frequent absences from plenary sessions. His eldest son, Toshiaki Yamazaki, became a former speaker of the Ono city council.
He died while still serving his sixth term. Local broadcaster Fukui TV reported that a by-election for his seat would be held on 25 April 2027, alongside the unified local elections.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (English and Japanese, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Fukui TV. Wikipedia ↗
Photos
1Masaaki Yamazaki in Riga, Latvia, in July 2014
by People Forever
same, my dad's been talking about Japanese parliament procedure for a decade because of some clip like this