Date of birth: Sept. 15, 1938

Party: Democratic Party of Japan

Electoral district: Lower House, Nara No. 2 (fifth term)

Taki has chaired the Lower House Judicial Affairs Committee since September.

A graduate of the University of Tokyo, he won a seat in the Lower House in 1996 after a career at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and serving as commissioner of the Fire and Disaster Management Agency.

He served as the senior vice justice minister in 2004 in Junichiro Koizumi's administration. He left Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party the following year over his opposition to postal privatization, winning a Lower House seat with New Party Nippon the same year.

He left that party in July 2007, and won in the 2009 Lower House election on the Democratic Party of Japan ticket.

His hobbies are making "soba" (buckwheat) noodles from flour, "shogi" (Japanese chess) and photography.