People sometimes conflate being a single-party state with being a dictatorship/totalitarianism. Japan is considered a model democracy and has been run by the same party for over 70 years! It's just another way of doing democracy, there's no one size fits all approach to it.

Er, who considers Japan a model democracy outside of Japan?

And yes, democracy can be authoritarian as well. The problem is that if the government controls public discourse to a sufficient extent, any democracy becomes a sham no matter how fair elections themselves are.

You're right, I used the wrong term. I'd say Singapore is still authoritarian in a vacuum though, western democracies aside.