Quote Originally Posted by Maciamo

Freedom & Democracy

Freedom in decision making is the lowest among developed countries. As for political rights and civil liberties, Freedom House has classified Japan as rank 1.5. It isn't bad on a worldwide basis, but Japan is in fact behind all Western countries and some others regarding political freedom. Likewise, World Audit has ranked Japan 25th for freedom of press, again behind all Western countries.
Japanese citizens actually have a very high level of civil liberties. This includes the right to protest and stage demonstrations. The interesting thing however, is that the government is quite impervious to change because of unrepresentative electoral demarcations, a very strong bureaucracy, and the dominance of the LDP. It's a peculiar situation.