Kentarō Genma

Kentaro Genma is the kind of politician whose backstory makes you do a double-take. The son of a family salted-fish business in Shizuoka, he somehow ended up in Cambodia dismantling small arms under a Japanese foreign aid program before most of his peers had even figured out their career path. That detour through post-conflict Southeast Asia, followed by a graduate degree in international peace and conflict resolution in Washington D.C., is not the usual route to a seat in the Japanese Diet — and honestly that's what makes him interesting. He came up through the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, which has produced a disproportionate share of Japan's reform-minded politicians, entered the Diet on the Tokai proportional list in 2017, then won the Shizuoka 8th district outright in 2021 and 2024 before losing it in 2026. I get the sense he's one of those legislators who actually did the fieldwork before the speechmaking, which in a chamber full of dynastic heirs is refreshingly unusual.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Kentarō Genma is a Japanese politician born on December 21, 1972, in Nishi Ward, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. He graduated from Seikei University. After running a small-arms collection project in Cambodia and studying at the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, he served in the Shizuoka Prefectural Assembly and then in the House of Representatives from 2017 until he lost his seat in 2026.

Name (English)

Kentarō Genma

Name (Japanese)

源馬謙太郎

Reading

げんま けんたろう

Born

December 21, 1972 (age 53)

Origin

Nishi Ward, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan

Occupation

Politician

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Sagittarius / Rat

University

Seikei University

• Official sitehttp://gemma-kentaro.com/
• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/gemmakentaro/
• Xhttps://x.com/gemmakentaro
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%BA%90%E9%A6%AC%E8%AC%99%E5%A4%AA%E9%83%8E
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18458881

Tags

• From Shizuoka Prefecture
• Politician

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.