Tōkyō-tosei

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Basic data
Title: 東京 都 制
Tōkyōtosei
Type: hōritsu
Number: 昭和 18 年 6 月 1 日 法律 第 89 号
Law No. 89 of June 1 Shōwa 18 (1943)
Come into effect: July 1, 1943
Expiry: With the exception of certain provisions: Law No. 67 of April 17, Shōwa 22 (1947) [local self-government]
Please note the note on the applicable legal version . Only the Japanese legal texts have legal effect, not translations into English or other languages.

The Tōkyō-tosei ( Japanese 東京 都 制 , Tosei for short ) was the legal basis for the administration of the Japanese prefecture of Tokyo between 1943 and 1947 and has had an impact on the administrative structure there to this day. Sometimes it is a general term for the administrative structure of Tokyo Prefecture since 1943. Tōkyō-tosei can be translated as “system” or “order of Tokyo prefecture”, with “prefecture” referring specifically to the type of prefecture to , which has only existed in Tokyo so far .

With the introduction of Tosei, the old Tokyo Prefecture ( Tōkyō-fu ) and the city ​​of Tokyo ( Tōkyō-shi ) were dissolved and replaced by the new Tokyo Prefecture ( Tōkyō-to ). The administrations were merged into a new prefecture administration, which continues to take over the prefectural tasks for the other municipalities in the prefecture, but in Tokyo is directly superordinate to the city districts and also takes on municipal tasks. In addition, the management of the administration went from the indirectly elected mayor of the city of Tokyo to the governor of the Tokyo Prefecture appointed by the central government (previously: Tōkyō-fu-chiji , now Tōkyō-to-chōkan ). The city council was abolished.

While Tosei, which was actually introduced in 1943, was part of the centralization of power by the authoritarian government ( Tōjō Cabinet ) in the Pacific War , plans for a tosei, i.e. a fundamental reorganization of the administration of the capital and the amalgamation of prefecture and city administration, had already existed beforehand . As early as 1929, the Tokyo City Council had set up a committee to implement a Tosei ( 都 制 に 関 す る 実 行 委員会 , Tosei ni kan suru jikkō iinkai ). From this committee the plans for the 1932 expansion of the urban area of ​​Tokyo ("Greater Tokyo") emerged. An earlier, unsuccessful draft law from 1895 had the conversion of the city of Tokyo (then still consisting of 15 districts) into a prefecture ( to ) Tokyo and the separation of the remaining areas of the previous Tokyo prefecture - today's Tama area and later incorporated suburbs of Tokyo - intended as a separate prefecture. The city of Tokyo, like Kyoto and Osaka, had only received the same rights of self-government as other cities in the country in 1898 and resisted attempts by the central government to enact special regulations for Tokyo. Later, the Kizokuin , the upper house of the Reichstag , blocked several bills that would have given large cities more powers over the prefectures. It was not until 1922 that the interior minister and the governors were able to intervene in the self-government of the six largest cities. Domestic pressure intensified again, especially after the invasion of Manchuria in 1931. A bill introduced in 1937 on a Tōkyō-tosei, which would have brought the local administration of the city of Tokyo under the control of the central government, failed because of the resistance of the major cities.

During the occupation the Tosei was reformed in 1946 and abolished in 1947 and replaced by the provisions of the chihō-jichi-hō , the "Law on Local Self-Government", in which the self-administration of the local authorities guaranteed in Chapter 8 of the constitution is carried out. This democratized the prefecture administration. However, the Tokyo Prefecture remained the Tōkyō-to : the city of Tokyo was not restored; Instead, the districts of Tokyo received as tokubetsu-ku ("special districts") comparable self-government rights as the other municipalities in the country, but were not initially recognized as such later. After the end of the occupation, some of the new rights, including the directly elected mayors, were withdrawn from the districts for decades; similar to the original Tosei, they were subordinate to the prefecture administration. Since then, the administration has been reformed in several steps, and since 2000 the districts of Tokyo have also been formally considered municipalities, but the Tokyo Prefecture continues to have some municipal tasks in Tokyo and retains some municipal taxes. The central government also has the option of intervening in the self-government of Tokyo Prefecture when appointing the head of the prefectural police.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Kurt Steiner: Local Government in Japan. Stanford University Press, Stanford 1965, pp. 178 f.
  2. ↑ Tokubetsu-ku kyōgikai: 特別 区 の 区域 の 沿革 に つ い て (PDF file; 519 kB), p. 6
  3. ↑ Sōmu-shō : Timeline for local self-government