[3] Before the electoral reform of the 1990s, the area had been part of the five-member Yamaguchi 2nd district which covered roughly the Eastern half of the prefecture and had been the former district of LDP presidents Nobusuke Kishi and Eisaku Satō.

Another representative from the pre-reform 2nd district for the LDP was former four-term Tokuyama city mayor Sakahiko Kōmura.

When Kōmura retired, his fourth son Masahiko won a seat in the district in 1980 and defended it in all pre-reform elections.

The main opposition NFP and the newly founded DPJ did not even nominate candidates in the first post-reform election of 1996, his only challengers were a Communist and an unaffiliated independent.

Kōmura was a minister in several cabinets in the 1990s and 2000s (Murayama, Obuchi, Mori II, Fukuda, Abe I).