This book picks up where many others have left off. Kohno tries to explain Japanese party politics in terms of individual political actors and electoral law. Rather than by the traditional socio-cultural explanations that have been popular in the past. Thus, this book does a good job at showing the weakness of those explanations that seek to explain Japanese party politics in terms of culture, history, or society. However, for the reader unfamiliar with Japanese politics this book will make a poor introduction due to its focus on microanalysis. Also, as a side note: I had the pleasure of taking a class from Prof. Kohno and was impressed by his berth of knowledge regarding political science in general.