Date of birth: Sept. 3, 1960

LDP faction: Nonaffiliated

Electoral district: Lower House; Gifu No. 1 (fifth term)

Reappointed as state minister in charge of consumer affairs, Noda will have to continue scrambling to tackle the tainted-rice controversy.

A former posts and telecommunications minister, she was asked to run in the LDP's presidential election but refused so she could address the food-safety scandal.

Noda gained notice by opposing Junichiro Koizumi's postal privatization drive. This stance led to her running as an independent in the election Koizumi called in 2005, and she won against Yukari Sato, whom Koizumi had sent against her as an "assassin." Noda later returned to the LDP.

After working at a major hotel, Noda became the youngest Gifu Prefectural Assembly member in 1987 and was appointed postal minister in 1998, at the time the youngest minister in the postwar era.