In Japan, there are 150,000 bridges with more than 15 m span, most of which have been maintained and operated by local governments. Osaka prefectural government, Aomori prefectural government and Osaka municipal government are famous as advanced local governments for bridge maintenance in Japan. The maintenance systems for the three local governments differ from each other in such processes as policy making, budgeting, inspection, repair, monitoring and so on. Nevertheless, the essence of bridge management for local governments is similar in terms of Life Cycle Cost (LCC) performance. In this paper, basic concepts and frameworks of bridge management systems developed in Japan are introduced.