Mr. Keiro Kitagami was born in Tokyo in 1967. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was 9 months old because of his father's work. He graduated from Servite High School in Anaheim, California. He came back to Japan at the age of 19 after graduating from high school and went on to graduate from the Faculty of Law, Kyoto University. He worked for the Ministry of Finance from 1992 and resigned from his last position at the Department of the Treasury to become an official candidate of the Democratic Party (DPJ) in 2002. He won a seat in the 44th (2005) and 45th (2009) General Elections of the House of Representatives. Mr. Kitagami served as a Vice Chairman of the Diet Affairs Committee of the DPJ, a Senior Director of the Special Committee on North Korean Abductions and Other Issues of the House of Representatives and a Director of the Committee on Economy, Trade and Industry of the House of Representatives. Current post is Vice Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry. In 2004 Mr. Kitagami was honored as an Inamori Fellow by the Inamori Foundation and in 2007 as a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum (Davos Forum).