As for the relationship between Diet members and local assembly members in Japan, previous empirical researches mainly focus on their clientelistic relations among them and upward political career move from local assembly to the Diet. In this article, the author presents a different perspective from these previous researches, and elaborates the tendency that Diet members try to change their career to local politicians, especially governors and mayors of local governments. Two political reforms in the 1990s affected the ambition of Diet members; the electoral reform changed patterns of political competition in electoral districts, and the decentralization reform enhanced the attractiveness of the position of mayors.
  In this article, the author investigates the cases that Diet members / former Diet members, who stood as a candidate in the five elections before and after the electoral reform, challenge governor / mayor / local assembly elections. The results show that more Liberal Democratic Party members challenge to local elections after the electoral reform, and the more leading opposition members, who were affiliated with Japan Socialist Party or New Frontier Party or Democratic Party, challenge to local elections than LDP members. Besides, this article reveals that by measuring the effective numbers of candidate the patterns of political competitions in governor / mayor elections are different before and after the electoral reform.

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