Shiga 2nd district was initially won by Masayoshi Takemura of New Party Harbinger (NPH), the former three-term governor of Shiga who had represented the five-member Shiga at-large district before the electoral reform since 1986 and was Chief Cabinet Secretary in the anti-LDP coalition Hosokawa Cabinet and Minister of Finance in the LDP-JSP-NPH Murayama Cabinet.

Konishi died in 2001, the resulting by-election was won by his younger brother Osamu.

However, in the general House of Representatives election of 2003, Democrat Issei Tajima narrowly beat Konishi who won a seat in the proportional vote.

In the "postal election" of 2005, Tajima defended the seat as Konishi ran as independent postal privatization rebel and the LDP sent "assassin" candidate Yūji Fujii.

Fujii won a proportional seat in 2005, but lost it in 2009 as Tajima won the district race by a large margin; in 2010, Fujii was elected mayor of Nagahama City.