Date of birth: Aug. 8, 1943

Party: Democratic Party of Japan

Electoral district: Lower House; Saitama No. 3 (seventh term)

Hosokawa has served as senior vice health and labor minister since the DPJ took power last year and has been working to improve the rights of temporary workers. When it was still in the opposition, the DPJ designated him as the justice minister in its shadow Cabinet.

Hosokawa is known as a prolific submitter of bills in the Diet. He is also a member of a nonpartisan group of lawmakers promoting local suffrage for permanent foreign residents.

Elected to the Lower House for the first time in 1990 as a member of the Social Democratic Party of Japan, Hosokawa joined the DPJ in 1996.

In the historic 2009 general election, he won by a landslide, stealing support from supporters of the then ruling Liberal Democratic Party.