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The 47 prefectures of Japan form Japan's first level of jurisdiction and administrative division. They consist of 43 prefectures (県 , ken) proper, two urban prefectures (府 , fu , Osaka and Kyoto), one "circuit" or "territory" (道 , dō , Hokkaido) and one "metropolis" (都 , to , Tokyo). The first prefectures, replacing the provinces of Japan, were created by the Meiji Fuhanken sanchisei administration in 1868.[1]
The chief executive of each prefecture is a directly-elected governor (知事, chiji). Ordinances and budgets are enacted by a unicameral assembly (議会, gikai) whose members are elected for four-year terms.
Under the current Local Autonomy Law, each prefecture is further divided into cities (市, shi) and districts (郡, gun) and each district into towns (町, chō/machi) and villages (村, son/mura). For example, Hokkaido has 14 subprefectures which act as branch offices (支庁, shichō) of the prefecture. Some other prefectures also have branch offices, which carry out prefectural administrative functions outside the capital. Tokyo, the capital, is a merged city-prefecture; it has features of both cities and prefectures.
The West's use of "prefecture" to label these regions of Japan stems from 15th-century Portuguese explorers' and traders' use of "prefeitura" to describe the fiefdoms they encountered there. Its original sense in Portuguese, however, was closer to "municipality" than "province". (Today, in turn, Japan uses its word ken (県), meaning "prefecture", to identify Portuguese districts.)
Those fiefs were headed by a local warlord or family, and despite that those fiefs have long since been dismantled, merged, and reorganized numerous times over, and given legislative governance and oversight, the rough translation stuck.
The current system was established by the Meiji government in July 1871 with the abolition of the han system and establishment of the prefecture system (廃藩置県 haihan-chiken). Although there were initially over 300 prefectures, many of them being former han territories, this number was reduced to 72 in the latter part of 1871, and 47 in 1888. The Local Autonomy Law of 1947 gave more political power to prefectures, and installed prefectural governors and parliaments.
In 2003, then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi proposed that the government consolidate the current prefectures into about 10 regional states. The plan called for each region to have greater autonomy than existing prefectures. This process would reduce the number of sub-prefecture administrative regions and cut administrative costs.[2] The Japanese government is also considering a plan by which several groups of prefectures would merge, creating a sub-national administrative division system consisting of between nine and thirteen states, and giving these states more local autonomy than the current prefectures enjoy.[3] As of August 2012, no reorganization has been scheduled.
Japan is a unitary state. The central government delegates many functions (such as education and the police force) to the prefectures and municipalities, but retains the overall right to control them. Although local government expenditure accounts for 70 percent of overall government expenditure, the central government controls local budgets, tax rates, and borrowing. Fiscal transfers, directed by the central government, account for around one-third of local government revenue.[4]
Historically, during the Edo period, the Tokugawa shogunate established bugyō-ruled zones (奉行支配地) around the nine largest cities in Japan, and 302 township-ruled zones (郡代支配地) elsewhere. When the Meiji government began to create the prefectural system in 1868, the nine bugyō-ruled zones became fu (府), while the township-ruled zones and the rest of the bugyo-ruled zones became ken (県). Later, in 1871, the government designated Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto as fu, and relegated the other fu to the status of ken. During World War II, in 1943, Tokyo became a to, a new type of pseudo-prefecture.
Despite the differences in terminology, there is little functional difference between the four types of local governments. The sub-national governments are sometimes collectively referred to as to-dō-fu-ken (都道府県) in Japanese, which is a simple combination of the four terms.
Tokyo is referred to as to (都), which is often translated as "metropolis." The Japanese government translates Tōkyō-to as "Tokyo Metropolis" in almost all cases, and the government is officially called the "Tokyo Metropolitan Government". However, there are some people who call Tōkyō-to "Tokyo Prefecture" in English.
Following the Potsdam Declaration. Many of Tokyo's special governmental characteristics disappeared during this time, and the wards took on an increasingly municipal status in the decades following the surrender. Administratively, today's special wards are almost indistinguishable from other municipalities.
The postwar reforms also changed the map of Tokyo significantly: In 1947, the 35 wards were reorganized into the 23 special wards, because many of its citizens had died in the bombardments during the war, many survivors had left the city, and many men who had been drafted had not returned.
There are some differences in terminology between Tokyo and other prefectures: police and fire departments are called chō (庁) instead of honbu (本部), for instance. However, the only functional difference between Tōkyō-to and other prefectures is that Tokyo administers wards as well as cities. Today, since the special wards have almost the same degree of independence as Japanese cities, the difference in administration between Tokyo and other prefectures is fairly minor.
In Osaka, several prominent politicians led by Tōru Hashimoto, mayor of Osaka City and former governor of Osaka Prefecture, are currently proposing an Osaka Metropolis plan, under which the Osaka City, and possibly other neighboring cities, would be replaced by special wards similar to Tokyo's.
Hokkaido is referred to as a dō (道) or circuit. This term was originally used to refer to regions of Japan consisting of several provinces (e.g. the Tōkaidō east coast region and Saikaidō west coast region). This was also a historical usage of the character in China. (In Korea this historical usage remains in use today and was kept during the period of Japanese rule.)
Hokkaido, the only remaining dō today, was not one of the original seven dō (it was known as Ezo in the pre-modern era). Its current name is believed to originate from Matsuura Takeshiro, an early Japanese explorer of the island. Since Hokkaido did not fit into the existing dō classifications, a new dō was created to cover it.
The Meiji government originally classified Hokkaido as a "Settlement Envoyship" (開拓使 kaitakushi), and later divided the island into three prefectures (Sapporo, Hakodate, and Nemuro). These were consolidated into a single Hokkaido Department (北海道庁 Hokkaido-chō) in 1886, at prefectural level but organized more along the lines of a territory. In 1947, the Department was dissolved, and Hokkaido became a full-fledged prefecture. The -ken suffix was never added to its name, so the -dō suffix came to be understood to mean "prefecture."
When Hokkaido was incorporated, transportation on the island was still very underdeveloped, so the prefecture was split into several "sub-prefectures" (支庁 shichō) that could fulfill administrative duties of the prefectural government and keep tight control over the developing island. These sub-prefectures still exist today, although they have much less power than they possessed before and during World War II: they now exist primarily to handle paperwork and other bureaucratic functions.
"Hokkaido Prefecture" is, technically speaking, a redundant term, although it is occasionally used to differentiate the government from the island itself. The government of the prefecture calls itself the "Hokkaido Government" rather than the "Hokkaido Prefectural Government".
Osaka and Kyoto Prefectures are referred to as fu (府). The Classical Chinese character from which this is derived implies a core urban zone of national importance. Before World War II, different laws applied to fu and ken, but this distinction was abolished after the war, and the two types of prefecture are now functionally the same.
43 of the 47 prefectures are referred to as ken (県). The Classical Chinese character from which this is derived carries a rural or provincial connotation, and an analogous character is used to refer to the counties of China and counties of Taiwan and districts of Vietnam.
The different systems of parsing framing (social sciences) the ways in which Japanese prefectures are perceived:
The prefectures are also often grouped into nine
General:
Note: Due to the division of Korea, Kōgen (Kangwon/Gangwon) and Keiki (Gyeonggi) are divided between North Korea and South Korea. While both Koreas each has its own Kangwon/Gangwon Province, the North Korean portion of Gyeonggi has been absorbed into other provinces.
Notes: ¹ as of 2000; ² km²; ³ per km²
1. Hokkaidō
2. Aomori 3. Iwate 4. Miyagi 5. Akita 6. Yamagata 7. Fukushima
8. Ibaraki 9. Tochigi 10. Gunma 11. Saitama 12. Chiba 13. Tōkyō 14. Kanagawa
15. Niigata 16. Toyama 17. Ishikawa 18. Fukui 19. Yamanashi 20. Nagano 21. Gifu 22. Shizuoka 23. Aichi
24. Mie 25. Shiga 26. Kyōto 27. Ōsaka 28. Hyōgo 29. Nara 30. Wakayama
31. Tottori 32. Shimane 33. Okayama 34. Hiroshima 35. Yamaguchi
36. Tokushima 37. Kagawa 38. Ehime 39. Kōchi
40. Fukuoka 41. Saga 42. Nagasaki 43. Kumamoto 44. Ōita 45. Miyazaki 46. Kagoshima 47. Okinawa
order), the prefectures of Japan and their commonly associated regions are: ISO 3166-2:JP From north to south (numbering in [5]
Tokyo, Hokkaido, Kantō region, Miyagi Prefecture, Hyōgo Prefecture
Kantō region, Niigata Prefecture, Japan, Hokkaido, Fukui Prefecture
Sapporo, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Prefectures of Japan
United Kingdom, Japan, Beijing, United States, London
Tokyo, Japan, Hokkaido, Greater Tokyo Area, Yokohama
Hokkaido, Prefectures of Japan, Tokyo, Pacific Ocean, Iturup
South Korea, Tokyo, Hokkaido, Australia, China
Japan, Hokkaido, Kantō region, Chūbu region, Prefectures of Japan