How does the Japanese government work?
The national government is a Constitutional Monarchy in which
the Emperor exercises no real power. The power in Japan is held by
the Prime Minister and the cabinet.
The Japanese Legislature (called the Diet, after the old
Bismarck era German legislature) is divided into two houses, a
House of Representatives (the lower house) and a House of
Councillors (the upper house). The lower house is the more powerful
of the two, and is the house where legislation is crafted and voted
on first. The Prime Minister is a member of the lower house. The
upper house has veto power, but is often overruled by the lower
house.
Japan has the Liberal Democratic Party (center-right and often
nationalist), the Democratic Party (center left), the New Komeito
Party (pacifist party, coalition member with the LDP), the
Socialist Party, and the Communist Party as major parties. However,
since the 1950s, the LDP has enjoyed nearly unbroken control of
both houses, only having been out of power in the lower house once
(briefly in the early 90s following a major scandal) and the upper
house once (currently).
Japan's legislators are elected in districts with multiple seats
per district.
Previously, voters were given one vote each regardless of the
number of seats in the district, and if, for example, a district
had four seats up, the top four vote getters would be elected. This
had been viewed as a means of keeping one party in power, as they
had the ability to run multiple candidates, split the vote and
still get most of the seats. More recently, Japan has changed to a
system where voters would get the same number of votes per district
as there were seats and also having a set number of seats that
would be distributed amongst the parties based on the parties'
national vote totals. The idea was to increase the representation
of minority parties.