| Party Politics is an important category of political theory study. In the history of humankind, since political parties came into being, it formed a closed relationship with politics. With the modern political parties in a strict sense establishing their core position in political power, Party Politics has been examined as the serious part of democracy.Among more than 200 countries and regions of the world, most of them adopt Party Politics. Because of different historical backgrounds and social environments for various political parties, social class interests, ideology and political platform are also different. Each nation's political parties has special history and national condition, political parties take up core position in politics, so changes of party politics directly decide a nation's foreign way of act and political trend.Therefore, in view of the fact, the paper mainly engages in China's important neighbor—historical development of Japan's party politics and characteristics. It aims at combining historical description with political analysis, summarizes its characteristics according to historical clues and seeks changes through the characteristics; therefore, we can grasp Japan's political operation process and future trends. The paper can be divided into five parts as follows:Chapter I mainly reviews appearance, development as well as impact of modern Japan's political party politics, and briefly introduces its postwar rehabilitation. This chapter focuses on democratic reforms of the United States on Japan's political parties and their political implications, as well as on the establishment of Japan's political parties in the early postwar period, and analyzes characteristics of Japan's party politics during this time. This paper holds that modern Japan's party politics appeared after the Meiji Restoration, it has played important roles in changing the political balance of forces between the Emperor Absolutism and constitutionalist in Meiji Constitution system, expanding constitutional factors and promoting social progress. However, due to suppress from feudal thoughts, autocratic emperor and feudal lords, modern Japan's political parties have also exposed feudal factors, non-thoroughness and weakness. After the war and the democratic reform of the United States, Japan established a truly modern bourgeois party political system. However, democratic reforms were not thoroughly carried out and the pre-war political organization structure and personnel were basically retained, previous factional system and conservativeness continue to exist, therefore, in real terms, Japan's postwar politics is a complex combination of Western parliamentary democracy and Emperor system. This feature necessarily decides the far-reaching impact on the development of Japan's political parties.Chapter II summarizes "55 system". It emphasized the background, causes and course of evolution of "55 system", and sums up the main characteristics of Japan's party politics during this period. The author thinks, "55 system" refers to the period from 1955 to 1993, Liberal Democratic Party was in power for 38 years and formed "one-party dominance" system under Japan's specific political party system, and is the special product under Japan's specific political circumstance. During this period, benefiting from prior national economic development strategy of Liberal Democratic Party, Japan succeeded in developing economy and rapidly became an economic power in the world. However, due to the impact of the remnants of pre-war political parties, Liberal Democratic Party's factional politics, timocracy not only resulted in political corruption and decayed democracy, but seriously hindered the economic sustainable development; the voice of reform was running high. After 1990s, with the disintegration of the pattern of the Cold War, after the recession of Japan's domestic reform forces, the struggles within the LDP factions intensified and headed for a split, these factors eventually led to the collapse of "55 system".Chapter III reviews the period of Japan's multi-party coalition government. In this part, the paper analyzed Japan's political transition and characteristics of the multi-party coalition government after the end of "55 system". The author maintains the period of multi-party coalition government can be divided into three stages: non-LDP dominant, LDP dominant and remodeling of "one-party priority" stages. In the earliest stage, Japan's political parties frequently splitter and united, as the conservative tendency of previous left-wing innovation political and centre parties, Japan's political parties demonstrate overall conservative trend, which marks Japan's postwar political system thorough collapse and Japan's political transition. In addition, multi-party coalition government also displays characteristics different from "55 system". This period mainly focuses on LDP "one-party priority" multi-party coalition government, and takes reconstruction of "one-party priority" as the main development trend; In leaders and elected members of the united regime, a strong generational shift and neo-conservative tendency are completely showed; there has been a fundamental shift of political oppositions of ruling and out parties, from "conservative and reformist opposition" to "traditional conservative and neo-conservative opposition" and " moderate conservative and radical conservative opposition ".As the core of this paper, Chapter IV generally summarizes Japan's party politics characteristics. It maintains that, in the evolution of Japan's postwar political parties, factional politics, timocracy and conservative politics are the main characteristics, which contact and interact in an organic whole. These features is the result of double factors: on the one hand influenced by Japan's social traditions, economic development model, changes in social structure and the mass media; on the other hand, is subject to bureaucratic and electoral system in political system. These factors are intertwined, so that Japan's party politics formed a solid political structure of three-dimensional of "governance, government, business". Later, with the media, they developed rectangle relationship. The solid relationship makes Japan's political reform a game after replacing rules, but factional struggles, corruption and conservative trend have not been fundamentally resolved.Chapter V analyzes the future of Japan's party politics. The paper maintains that, with the rise of Japan's neo-conservative thought and the neo-conservative forces, conservative trend in Japan's party politics has continually increased and democracy declined, which lead to the confidence crisis and weakness of authority for the party leadership, as well as severely challenge the political stability. Under such circumstance, to completely reverse the political predicament of Japan's party politics is not merely decided by some political party, but needs to change Japan's political party system on the whole. How to deal with the mission not only concerns about the future and destiny of Japan's political parties, but about the development of Japan's society and political stability.Based on the analysis and summary of the above five parts, the conclusion of the paper points out: viewed from the development situation of Japan's party politics, the conservative trend of Japan's political parties will lead to a tendency of the overall conservative political development; either LDP's "one-party priority" remodels or two major political parties system of LDP & democratic parties comes out, competition among Japan's political parties will be further intensified. The paper presents several possible future regime changes, but whatever the outcome is, Japan will inevitably cause volatile political situation. At the same time, as the internationalization has become the mainstream of time development, to be international in the aspects of economy, politics and culture is an inevitable challenge for Japan's party politics development. How to meet the requirements of the international development, and lead Japan to the correct path of democratic development, will examine the leadership authority, governing ability and strategic choice of Japan's political parties.In short, Japan's party politics revived under the influence of external forces, became mature in the historical development and constantly changed in the practical environment. In the process, Japan's party politics has gradually met the needs for Japan's social and economic development, conformed to the historical trend of internationalization and promoted all aspects forward. At the same time, problems in Japan's party politics, as well as the domestic and international environment changes, will also have a far-reaching impact on Japan's political development and the future direction of Japan.
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