All tutorials simply import tkinter,
I am wondering, though, why not import _tkinter? If my understanding is correct, _tkinter is the actual library in cpython and tkinter is the interface or API.
I am simply trying to grasp the paradigm as I read through some of the tkinter source code. It seems there is some python black magic afoot.
_tkinter is a C-based module that wraps an internal tcl/tk interpreter. When you import it, and it only, you get access to this interpreter but you do not get access to any of the python classes. 
You certainly can import _tkinter, but then you would have to recreate all of the python interfaces to the tcl/tk functions.
Import _tkinter or tkinter?