Japan’s Administrative Division

一道一都二府四十県

いちどう、いっと、にふ、よんじゅうけん

Ichi-dō, Itto, Nifu, Yonjūken

1 circuit (Hokkaidō literally means ‘the way to the North’), 1 metropolis, 2 urban prefectures and 43 prefectures.

Japan’s Administrative Division.

Such is the current administrative division of Japan, the political centre of which is in the capital, Tōkyō-to 東京都, the Tōkyō Metropolitan area. Tōkyō used to be both an urban prefecture and a city until 1943 when its status was transformed by merging all its wards together into a new administrative unit, the metropolis (to 都).

Tokyo, Shinjuku Ward, Kabukichō.
©erikeae.com

As of 2021, Tōkyō region is the only region identified as a ‘metropolis’ but since the early 2010’s many plans have been made to transform Osaka into a metropolitan area similar to Tōkyō. The main local political party, the Osaka Restoration Association 大阪維新の会, expressed the desire to merge Osaka with Sakai, its neighbouring city, to form the Osaka Metropolis 大阪都. Some plans included the possibility to form semi-autonomous wards, similar to the ones in Tōkyō, and thus become a prefecture-independent city, but on several occasions such propositions have been downvoted both in referendums and political votes. Therefore, Osaka is still identified as an urban prefecture. However, the event created a precedent, enabling every Japanese agglomeration with more than 2 million inhabitants to legally conduct referendums to decide whether to become a metropolis. So, in the near future the information in this post might have to be updated.

Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the Tokugawa dynasty and landlord who started the Edo period.

Japan currently has only two urban prefectures (fu 府), Osaka and Kyōto. Fu is an ancient Chinese administrative division that has been adopted throughout Asia, both forcefully and by cultural appropriation. In Japan this administrative unit was introduced with the very first division of the country in 645 with the Taika reforms organizing the territory under the jurisdiction of a central capital. This unit has been used throughout Japanese history to the point of being associated with the notion of government itself – bakufu 幕府 was the name given to the political system of the Shogunate government.

This structure came to be when the warrior class of the samurai, led by landlords (daimyō 大名), forcefully acquired political power from a decaying aristocracy. A new capital called Edo was founded, thus opening a new historical era known as the Edo period 江戸時代 or Tokugawa period 徳川時代 (1603–1868) from the family name of the ruling sovereigns.

In 1868, a major political revolution, the Meiji Restauration 明治維新, got rid of the former feudalistic administrative system, depriving landlords of their possessions, and reforming the administrative system towards a more occidentalized structure. Consequently, Japan was divided into urban (fu 府) and rural prefectures (ken 県). The very first urban prefectures established were the actual Kyōto-fu and the territories surrounding Hakodate in Hokkaidō. Ten more urban prefectures were established soon after, but they progressively acquired the status of rural prefectures by expanding their borders or merging with the neighbouring territories. In 1943 the government implemented a plan to merge all the wards of Tōkyō’s urban prefecture into the newly created metropolis. Since then, only Osaka and Kyōto kept their urban prefecture status.

Hokkaidō, Mombetsu. ©tordo.xyz

The case of Hokkaidō is quite particular. As mentioned previously, the area of Hakodate used to be an urban prefecture, and it was accompanied by two more rural prefectures, dividing the island into three prefectures. The circuit (dō 道) administrative division used nowadays has a similar history to the urban prefecture one. Of Chinese origins, dō was used as a category regrouping several provinces into macro-sections. Hokkaidō, the circuit towards the northern sea, was simply the last of the list of circuits shaping Japan, among which Tōkaidō (the circuit of the eastern sea) is probably the most famous one, as it was the subject of a series of ukiyo-e stamps made by Utagawa Hiroshige, known as ‘The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō’. When the central government of the Meiji period colonized the northern island of Ezo, several prefectures were constituted. The history of Hokkaidō is rather complex and controversial, so it is not possible to fully cover the topic in just one post – here we focus solely on the facts related to the administrative transformation of this territory. In 1947, the three prefectures of the island were merged into a macro-prefecture labelled Dō, both keeping the ancient nomenclature and reminding of the fact that the vast territory was formed by multiple prefectures.

53 Stations of the Tōkaidō, Utagawa Hiroshige, 9th station: Odawara.

Takachiho-chō, Nishi-Usukigun, Miyazaki Prefecture.
©ken-li

Lastly, we have the 43 prefectures (ken 県) into which the country is divided. They progressively lost their ‘rural’ flavour as their biggest cities developed and expanded. Each prefecture is governed by local prefectural governments that are closely related to and dependent upon the central government of the capital. Six of those prefectures are further divided into sub-prefectures in order to better govern a vast territory or a particularly fragmented one. Among them, for example, there are the subprefectures of the spacious Hokkaidō and the subprefecture of Nishi-Usuki in Miyazaki Prefecture, which has been constituted to better govern this highly mountainous region. Each prefecture is subsequently divided into municipalities according to the population. The biggest agglomerations are labelled cities (shi 市), smaller ones are called towns (machi 町) and the smallest, villages (mura 村).

Written by Marty Borsotti