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Government
Japan is a democractic country with a two-house parliment called Diet that's lead by a prime minister elected by the majority party. The emperor today only has ceremonial duties. Japan is divided into 47 prefectures, each with its own governor and assembly. Each city, town, and village has its own government.
Since the postwar period, Japan has been dominated by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which is neither liberal nor democratic. For the last several years their have been major upheavals with the LDP dividing into several conversative parties. The main opposition, the Socialists. Most of the recent political divisions are based on personality, not on ideology.
Unlike US politics, the national bureaucracy has enormous power by writing as well as implementing the laws the Diet passes. Japan's brightest go into an alphabet soup of ministers. The country runs on the touted "Iron Triangle" of the LDP, the bureaucracy and industry. Although some change is brewing, political stability has fostered the economic growth of postwar Japan.
The postwar Constitution renounced war. Japan's commitment of troops to United Nations' peacekeeping efforts is a constant source of debate in the government. Japan's armed forced (Self-Defense Forces), receive the third largest defense budget in the world.
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