The Japanese political system is a parliamentary democracy. Japan was the first Western style government in Asia. Its Japanese style parliamentary system was adopted in the 1880s using the model of Bismark’s Prussia. It has a multiparty system, free elections and a parliament that functions much the same way that any other democratic parliament functions (Stockwin 2008). But in a crucial respect, the Japanese party system has been relatively unusual among the world’s true democracies. For much of its existence, it was a one party dominant system operating within a free and open electoral system. Among real, free democracies, Japan shared its one party dominant designation with Italy (Christian Democrats from 1946 to 1994) and Sweden (Socialists from 1920 to 2003). The fact that each of these democracies had a governing political party for much of its post1945 era and each has also in recent decades entered into a more competitive party system is important for understanding the contemporary politics for each nation and, we would argue, especially for Japan since its long term ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party, is once again back in power. We focus this book on Japan’s politics on its party system because in a parliamentary system, the executive branch (prime minister and cabinet) is selected as a result of the pattern of party numbers in the parliament. Thus, to understand Japanese politics and policy, one must know the nature of the ruling and opposition parties and their leaders. To be even more specific, the quality of Japan’s government in the past decade has been closely associated with the strengths and weaknesses of Japan’s prime ministers and the dominant party in the system. In this opening chapter, we want to introduce the basics of the election system and discuss several of the more important characteristics of Japanese political parties, specifically, the domination of the Liberal Democratic Party since 1955, the relationship between the parties and the Japanese voters, the party structures and the role of money in Japanese elections.