Machi

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Machi ( Japanese 町 ; in the Kun reading ) or Chō (also 町 ; in the On reading ) denotes two types of administrative units in Japan .

Independent communities

According to the chihō-jichi-hō ( 地方自治 法 , "law on local self-government") of 1947, as previously according to the prefecture and municipal regulations of the empire, Machi are one of the next Mura and Shi (together 市町村 , shi-chō-son ) three regular community types and a direct subdivision of a Japanese prefecture (To / Dō / Fu / Ken) . In Japanese, the names of this community are usually given together with the suffix -machi / -chō. Up to the abolition of the districts ( -gun ) as an administrative unit in the 1920s, -machi / -chō were subordinate to the district administrations (with a few exceptions in remote island communities, which were directly subordinate to the prefecture administration through sub-prefectures).

In contrast to the mostly smaller rural Mura (the largest have almost 40,000 inhabitants), Machi are urban communities that in most cases can be compared to a small European town . The largest machi in history, suburbs of the city of Tokyo in Tokyo prefecture before 1932, had over 100,000 inhabitants. After the Heisei territorial reform of the 2000s, the largest Machi today have around 50,000 inhabitants; in 2019, Fuchū-chō in Hiroshima Prefecture was the largest in the country.

On March 8, 2010, the number of Shi (urban districts; in many cases also large cities , the smallest, however, have fewer than 10,000 inhabitants) in Japan was 784 for the first time higher than the number of Machi (783). At the beginning of the Heisei Territorial Reform ( Heisei Daigappei ) there were 670 Shi in April 1999 and Machi in 1994 . The number of villages / rural communities ( Mura ) fell from 568 to 187 over the same period.

At the beginning of December 2018, according to e-Stat, there were 745 町 as (rural / small / historical district members) cities, of which 467 are read as ち ょ う chō and 278 as ま ち machi . It is not a clearly delineated regional distribution; but overall, for the cities in almost all Western Japan the reading prefectures -chō predominant (exceptions: Fukuoka, Oita, Kumamoto and depending on the east-west boundary parts of Central Japan), in large parts of eastern Japan is -machi frequently (except Hokkaido, Iwate and, depending on the east-west demarcation, parts of central Japan), with both -machi and -chō existing in a number of prefectures , for example in Yamanashi six -chō and two -machi .

Parish parts

Within a Japanese city, it is used to designate districts / districts, many also contain the addition -machi or -chō in the name. In large cities designated by the state ( seirei shitei toshi ) they are a subdivision of the city districts ( Ku ); in smaller municipalities and in the 23 districts of Tokyo they are the next largest subdivision after the municipal level. In contrast to German districts, these are clearly delimited administrative units. For location information in cities, Machi / Chō plays a role comparable to streets in Central Europe.

The next subdivision of a Machi / Chō speaks again "Chō", but with a different character ( 丁 ). While the larger Machi / Chō ( 町 ) has proper names in which it is read as either "-machi" or "-chō", the smaller Chō ( 丁 ) are numbered throughout.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 全国 の 市 数 、 町 を 上 回 る 平 成 の 大 合併 で 再 編 進 む . In: 47NEWS. March 8, 2010, Retrieved March 8, 2010 (Japanese).
  2. ↑ e-Stat, Data Set - Basic data, current municipalities , accessed on December 12, 2018 (English)
  3. ↑ Nishi-Nippon Shimbun , April 8, 2016: 「町」 の 読 み 方 ち ょ ～ ま ち ま ち 「ま ち」 か 「ち ょ う」 か 徹底 調査 [福岡 県] ( Memento from June 2, 2016 in the Internet Archive )