Prefecture (Japan)

Prefectures ( Japanese 都 道 府 県 todōfuken , singular都 -to ,道 -dō ,府 -fu or県 -ken ) are a regional authority in Japan . As a unitary state , Japan is actually divided into three administrative levels across the board: The 47 prefectures today (see list of prefectures of Japan ) form the middle administrative level between the central state and the municipalities (shi / ku / chō / son). Each prefecture is further subdivided into municipalities across the board. However, the municipality affiliation of some areas is unclear and thus in some places also the prefectural boundaries, if municipalities from different prefectures are involved. The 47 prefectures are often grouped into eight geographically and culturally contiguous regions , which, however, are not administrative units themselves.

The principle of "local self-government " (chihō jichi) is laid down in Chapter 8 of the 1947 constitution . The prefectures are particularly financially dependent on the central government . The administration of each prefecture is headed by a governor (to- / dō- / fu- / ken-chiji) who, like the prefecture parliaments (to- / dō- / fu- / ken-gikai), has been elected every four years since 1947 is chosen.

description

In Japanese there are four different names for “prefecture”, which stem from the different nature of the respective administrative units in the past: to ( Japanese 都), dō (道), fu (府) and ken (県). To be only for the Tokyo used (Tōkyō-to) , dō exclusively for the prefecture of Hokkaido , fu for the prefectures of Osaka and Kyoto , ken for all other 43 prefectures. In Japanese, which has no grammatical plural, the summary To-dō-fu-ken stands for the prefectures of Japan . The prefecture names are attached individually as nouns and as suffixes to the respective prefectural names, e.g. B. Kyōto-fu (京都 府).

The first prefectures were formed from former shogunate land during the Meiji Restoration in 1868 , with the daimyo Han as well . With the abolition of the Han system on August 29, 1871, the fiefs were converted directly to prefectures, so that there were 305 prefectures ( fu and ken ). Their number was drastically reduced to 47 by 1888.

The character県for the ken was used in ancient Japanese for the district administrative units agata , which were abolished in the 7th century with the introduction of the Ritsuryō system in favor of the gun (郡). For this, the character for the Chinese xiàn ( Chinese 縣 / 县) was used, which is historically translated as prefecture. Interestingly, these were under the Chinese commandant offices (郡, jùn ), a character that in Japanese stands for districts that are now subordinate to the prefectures.

In 1947 a law was passed that gave the prefectures greater independence and political power. In 2003, the then Prime Minister of Japan, Jun'ichirō Koizumi , announced that the current prefectures will be merged into ten states . The resulting states should be granted more autonomy than the prefectures. However, the relevant legislation is on hold. In the meantime, such a dōshūsei is supported in principle by most of the larger parties.

Prefectures

The order of the prefecture numbers is based on the geographical location and is standardized in ISO 3166-2: JP .

The prefectures of Japan with their respective ISO codes

prefecture	code
Aichi	JP-23
Akita	JP-05
Aomori	JP-02
Chiba	JP-12
Ehime	JP-38
Fukui	JP-18
Fukuoka	JP-40
Fukushima	JP-07
Gifu	JP-21
Gunma	JP-10
Hiroshima	JP-34
Hokkaido	JP-01
Hyogo	JP-28
Ibaraki	JP-08
Ishikawa	JP-17
Iwate	JP-03
Kagawa	JP-37
Kagoshima	JP-46
Kanagawa	JP-14
Kochi	JP-39
Kumamoto	JP-43
Kyoto	JP-26
Mie	JP-24
Miyagi	JP-04
Miyazaki	JP-45
Nagano	JP-20
Nagasaki	JP-42
Nara	JP-29
Niigata	JP-15
Ōita	JP-44
Okayama	JP-33
Okinawa	JP-47
Osaka	JP-27
saga	JP-41
Saitama	JP-11
Shiga	JP-25
Shimane	JP-32
Shizuoka	JP-22
Tochigi	JP-09
Tokushima	JP-36
Tokyo	JP-13
Tottori	JP-31
Toyama	JP-16
Wakayama	JP-30
Yamagata	JP-06
Yamaguchi	JP-35
Yamanashi	JP-19

Administrative structure

Main articles: Parish (Japan) , Ku (Japan)

Some prefectures are now further subdivided into Chiiki (地域), which are partially comparable with the German government districts . In the area's largest Hokkaido these 14 units are called Sogo Shinko kyoku and Shinko kyoku ( (総合)振興局) and also "be sub-prefecture " ( Engl. Subprefecture ) translated.

All prefectures are divided into municipalities: independent cities / cities Shi , as well as districts Gun belonging cities Machi / Chō and villages Mura / Son (村) and "special districts" Tokubetsu-ku (特別 区). Together, the communities in Japan are referred to as shi-chō-son (市町村) or, taking Tokyo into account, shi-ku-chō-son (市区 町 村, in a purely Tokyo context also区 市町村, ku-shi-chō-son ) .

“Government-designated cities” ( seirei shitei toshi ) are subdivided into Ku districts , which stand above the city districts. Cities (Shi) are further divided into city districts, whose characters 町 are the same as those for rural communities and are also read as machi or chō, depending on the place .

Historical development

After the establishment of the first prefectures in 1868 / area-wide in 1871, the Meiji government developed a modern sub-national administration in several steps, initially in part parallel to the structures of the Edo period ( han , gumi , class order ) and antiquity ( dō , provinces , Circles ). Most of today's forms of administration emerged in the 1890s, and [self] administration was essentially brought into its current form during the occupation. The actual spatial current administrative structure was largely shaped by the prefectural mergers of the 1870s and 1880s and, below that, by the municipal mergers of the post-war period (especially the Great Shōwa Territorial Reform of the 1950s and the Great Heisei Territorial Reform of the 2000s). The main steps were:

• Administrative division of the prefectures under the "system of large and small districts" (大 区 小区 制 daiku-shōku-sei ) from 1871, linked to the modernized family register ( Koseki )

Prefecture (-fu / -ken)

[numbered] "large district" (大 区 daiku ) (in some places congruent with ancient circles, gun / kōri )

[numbered] "small district" (小区 shōku ) (not in all prefectures)

• Administrative division under the "Law on the Organization of -gun , -ku , -machi and -mura " (郡 区 町 村 編制 法 gunkuchōson-hensei-hō ) of 1878 and other laws

Administrative unit		administration
Prefecture (-fu / -ken)		appointed governor (fu- / kenchiji) , elected prefectural assembly (fu- / kenkai)
City district / "District" (- ku )	County (- gun )	appointed district chairman (gun- / kuchō) , assembly elected in -ku from 1880 (kukai)
-machi / -chō (in the country: city, in larger settlements: city district) or -mura / -son (village)		with restrictions: elected mayor (戸 長 kochō ; in -chō / -son of a -ku functionally replaced by kuchō), elected assembly from 1880 (chō- / sonkai)

• Administrative structure according to prefecture regulations, district regulations, municipal regulations (fukensei, gunsei, shisei, chōsonsei) 1888–90

Administrative unit		administration
Prefecture ([-dō /] - fu / -ken)		“Prefectural Advisory Committee” (fu- / ken-sanjikai) composed of appointed governor, deputy, and appointed & elected honorary aldermen (meiyoshoku sanjikaiin) , [indirectly in some prefectures 1890–99] elected assembly
District-free city (- shi )	until 1920s: district (-gun)	"Advisory city / district committee" / magistrate (shi- / gun-sanjikai) from appointed / from 1920s: indirectly elected mayor (shichō) / district administrator (gunchō) , deputy [s] and appointed & elected honorary councilors, [in cities up to 1920s under three-class voting rights, indirect] elected assembly (shi- / gunkai) in counties
	City ( -machi / -chō ) or village ( -mura / -son )	with restrictions: indirectly elected mayor (chō- / sonchō) , [until the 1920s under two- class voting rights ] elected assembly (chō- / sonkai)
in three, later six large cities: [administrative / city] districts (-ku)		basically part of the city administration; elected assemblies continued in the districts of some cities
Districts / districts ( -machi / -chō / aza / ua or without suffix / addition) & possibly their [numbered] district sections (-chōme)		no administrative units in the narrow sense, but as a rule basic units of the census and the address system , in cities also partly the local / district associations ( chōnaikai ; during the war the smaller tonarigumi superimposed on the above-mentioned (5/10-nin-) gumi of the Tokugawa - Going back in time), which were also entrusted with public tasks, especially during the war (civil defense / air defense, food rationing, political mobilization / Yokusankai conformity)

Special cases with a fundamentally different administrative structure are Okinawa -ken before 1909 (introduction of the prefecture order) / 1921 (introduction of the municipal codes and urban districts), Hokkai [-] dō before 1922 (introduction of urban districts) / 1946 (introduction of the prefecture rules ), Tōkyō- to 1943-47 (subject to special laws, especially Tōkyō-tosei ).

Centralization measures and new parallel regional administrative structures (excluding parliaments) in the Pacific War are not shown here .

• Administrative structure according to the post-war constitution and self-government law since 1947

Administrative unit		administration
Prefecture (-to / -dō / -fu / -ken)		directly elected governor (to- / dō- / fu- / ken-chiji) , directly elected parliament (to- / dō- / fu- / ken-gikai)
Only in some prefectures, and not everywhere: sub-prefecture ( shichō , shinkōkyoku and others)		Part of the prefecture administration
Municipality : District- free city (-shi) , [special] district ( [tokubetsu] -ku ) , city (-machi / -chō) or village (-mura / -son)		directly elected mayor (shi- / ku- / chō- / sonchō) , directly elected parliament (shi- / ku- / chō- / son-gikai)
Only in designated large cities ( seirei shitei toshi ) from 1956, there across the board : [administrative] district ([gyōsei] -ku)		Part of the city administration
Districts / districts ( -machi / -chō / aza / ua or without suffix / addition) & possibly their [numbered] district sections (-chōme)		No administration per se, but mostly basic units of the census and the address system; sometimes, especially after congruent incorporations, branch offices of the municipal administration

Types of prefectures

The reason for the different names of the prefectures in the Japanese language ( to , do , fu and ken ) lies in their respective historical development.

fu and ken

During the Edo period , the Tokugawa shogunate administered several cities directly through shogunate administrators (奉行, bugyō ), including the "three capitals" (三 都, santo ) Edo , Osaka and Kyoto and other important cities such as the limited for direct foreign trade Nagasaki port opened to Christians, Nikkō with the Tokugawa mausoleum or the treaty ports opened by the great western powers in the 1850s . The Tokugawa also held some of the country's most productive regions in the great plains. The areas controlled by the shogunate, Bakuryō , together comprised about a quarter of the country. In the Han (fiefdom) the rest of the land was administered by the respective daimyo.

In 1868, in the Meiji Restoration, the bugyō of the three largest cities and the treaty ports were converted into saibansho , then into fu . With the exception of Tokyo , Osaka and Kyoto , these prefectures were renamed ken in 1869 . The fu are therefore also known as city prefectures, but all of them were expanded to include rural areas in the following years. The rural areas controlled by Tokugawa in the Edo period and the other shogunate cities were divided into ken in 1868 and administered by the Meiji government. This administrative structure in the early Meiji period, in which the fiefs (han) still ruled by the princes and the fu and ken controlled by the new central government existed in parallel, is also known in Japanese as fu-han-ken sanchisei (roughly "three -fold administrative system from fu , han and ken ”).

When the Han was abolished nationwide in 1871 , most of them were initially converted to ken without changing their territory - after that there were initially 305 prefectures (excluding Kaitakushi / Hokkaidō) - but many were amalgamated in the same year. Until the 1880s, the present-day prefectures had essentially developed in the mother country. In 1878 the prefectures were given the right to raise their own taxes, and at the same time elected prefectural parliaments (Hokkaidō and Okinawa only later), which were allowed to decide on these taxes.

In 1889, a local self-government based on the Prussian model and the status of shi , independent cities, was introduced alongside the already existing district communities ( machi and mura ). At the same time, numerous premodern municipalities were merged into larger units in a regional reform. Although 1889 were also the three largest cities in Kyoto , Osaka and Tokyo -shi , but with the shisei tokurei was for them a special, after these had no independent executive; instead, the governor of the prefecture was also mayor of the city. This special regulation was not lifted until 1898. Before the Second World War, different laws existed for fu and ken , but these disappeared after the war, so that fu and ken are basically the same type of administrative unit.

During the Second World War, the self-government of the city of Tokyo was replaced by direct control of the central government and Tōkyō-fu to Tōkyō-to .

Hokkaido

The designation dō (district) was originally used in the Gokishichidō system to designate regions such as Tōkaidō . These in turn consisted of several provinces. Hokkaidō is the only dō in Japan that still exists today , although it was not one of the original seven dō (in premodern times it was known as Ezo). The current name is traced back to Matsuura Takeshiro . He was an early Japanese explorer of the island of Hokkaido. Since it did not fit into the existing dō division, he introduced a new dō .

The Meiji government originally designated Hokkaidō as a free settlement area, later the island was divided into three prefectures named after the larger cities of Sapporo , Hakodate and Nemuro . These were combined in 1886 into a single Hokkaidō prefecture with the administrative seat of Sapporo. The ending ken was never added to the name Hokkaidō, so that the dō suffix is ​​understood as a prefecture.

Even today, due to its size, natural conditions and severe winters, Hokkaidō, unlike most other prefectures, is difficult to manage from a single central office, so that the prefecture was divided into various sub-prefectures . The field offices ( (sōgō) shinkō-kyoku , formerly shichō ) of the prefecture administration support their administrative work on site. Correspondences in various other prefectures (chihō) play a comparatively minor role.

From a purely grammatical point of view, Hokkaidō Prefecture is a redundant term. However, it is sometimes used to distinguish the term for the prefectural government from the name of the island. The Japanese term for the government of Hokkaidō prefecture is directly translated as Hokkaidō government and not Hokkaidō prefecture government .

Hokkaidō is the most sparsely populated island in Japan.

Tōkyō-to

The only to in Japan is Tokyo (Tōkyō) . After the fall of the shogunate, Tōkyō-fu , a prefecture like Osaka and Kyōto, existed . At first it consisted only of the urban area of ​​the former Edo, but was soon expanded to include surrounding districts, later to include the Tama area and remote islands. In 1878 parishes and counties were reorganized by the gun-ku-chō-son-hensei-hō (郡 区 町 村 編制 法). The later urban area of ​​Tokyo was divided into 15 ku (districts or city districts), the rest of the prefecture initially consisted of six districts (gun) with their communities (chō-son) . During the municipal reform of 1889, the city ​​of Tōkyō was created , the 15 ku became municipal districts. In 1932, five surrounding districts of Tokyo Prefecture were incorporated into the city of Tokyo, which now comprised 35 districts.

In 1943, with the decree of Tōkyō-tosei, the city of Tōkyō was dissolved and Tokyo’s city districts were now under direct control of the prefecture administration appointed by the Ministry of the Interior. The administration of Tōkyō-to then continued to function as the prefecture administration for the entire prefecture, but at the same time as the city administration for the previous city. To reflect this characteristic was Tōkyō-fu to Tōkyō-to rename, and to "here metropolis; Capital "is called. After the end of the Pacific War , in 1947 the urban area was reorganized into 23 [“special”] districts ([tokubetsu-] ku) at the municipal level and the administration was democratized. After the end of the occupation, however, the districts were initially directly prefecture again and the citizens were allowed to z. B. not directly elect their mayors as in other municipalities; but in several reforms, the districts were gradually given a status comparable to that of other municipalities in the prefecture and throughout the country by the year 2000.

There are some differences in terminology between Tokyo and the other prefectures. For example, the police and fire stations are referred to as chō instead of hombu . The main difference between Tokyo Prefecture and the other prefectures is that Tokyo continues to take over some clearly delimited communal tasks from the Tokyo districts and levy some otherwise communal taxes there. The Japanese government gives the term Tōkyō-to in English with Tokyo Metropolis . The administration is called Tokyo Metropolitan Government in English translation . In German, however, Tōkyō-to is usually translated as Tōkyō prefecture .

The Osaka Ishin no Kai , who ruled Osaka prefecture, wanted to convert the Osaka-fu into the Osaka-to , in which the cities of Osaka and Sakai like Tokyo would be abolished and divided into "special districts", which would then have municipal status , as one of their main goals left some communal tasks to the prefecture administration. After political setbacks, especially a clear mayoral defeat in the city of Sakai, the concrete plans were initially limited to the dissolution of only the city of Osaka; But even this less ambitious “to / Metropolis plan” was rejected by the citizens of Osaka in two referendums in 2015 and 2020.

Development of the number of major fiefs / principalities / daimiyates / han and prefectures / dō / fu / ken up to 1889, including forerunners that are not yet fully equivalent

time	yep	Meiji 1 .Switch-4	End of Meiji 2	End of Meiji 3	Meiji 4.6	Meiji 4.7	Meiji 4.11	Meiji 5.9	Late 1873 (= Meiji 6)	Late 1875 (Meiji 8)	Late 1876 (Meiji 9)	Apr. 1879 (Meiji 12)	Late 1888 (Meiji 21)
	greg.	May / Jun. 1868	Jan. 1870	Feb. 1871	Jul / Aug 1871	Aug./Sep. 1871	Dec. 1871 / Jan. 1872	Oct./Nov. 1872
	events	(= fu / han / ken system )			Abolition of the Han		Dajōkan decree on governors (県 治 条例 kenchi jōrei )	Establishment of Ryūkyū-han				Founding Okinawa-ken	(Number unchanged since )
開拓 使 Kaitakushi / 北海道 Hokkaidō		-	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1 (dō)
府 -fu		10	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3
県 -ken		23	46	43	41	302	72	69	60	59	35	36	43
藩 -han		277	271	256	261	-		1	1	1	1	-
total		310	321	303	306	306	76	74	65	64	40	40	47

administration

Each of the 47 prefectures is headed by a governor, the legislature is a unicameral parliament . Elections take place every four years, with the election cycles for governors and parliaments being independent of one another; This means that gubernatorial and parliamentary elections do not have to take place at the same time. National law provides that each prefectural administration should have general affairs, finance, welfare, health, and labor departments. Depending on local needs, departments for agriculture, fishing, forestry, trade and industry can also be set up.

In accordance with the constitutional self-government of the municipalities and prefectures, the central government is prohibited from enacting a special law that only applies to a specific regional authority without obtaining the consent of the residents concerned (Article 95). Such a referendum (jūmin tōhyō) was carried out in Tokyo Prefecture in 1950 to pass the shuto-kensetsu-hō (首都 建設 法; "Capital City Building Act "), which intervened in urban planning in Tokyo. It remained the only one at the prefecture level, as later laws were formulated and interpreted in such a way that a referendum was not necessary.

However, the prefectures are not entirely passive either. The Japanese identify strongly with their village, their city and their region and there is a strong effort to cultivate and preserve the regional characteristics. Prefectures have also often pioneered more modern legislation, which is then adopted by the central government.

An example of the independent decision of a prefectural parliament that was noticed abroad was provided by Shimane prefecture in 2005 when it declared February 22nd to be Takeshima Day (the Takeshima archipelago was occupied by South Korea in 1953 , but Japan continues to raise claims to the Islands). The proclamation of the holiday has sparked protests in Korea. Prime Minister Jun'ichirō Koizumi and the central government did nothing about it, referring to the independence of the local parliaments. Other examples of political decisions at the prefectural level that have received international media coverage are the Kanagawa smoking ban in public spaces and the Tokyo emissions trading system for greenhouse gases.

Education, one of the main tasks of the German federal states, is regulated in Japan by the central government and education councils at the district level, without the influence of the prefecture. However, some universities are run by prefectures. High schools, a major role of American county education councils, are mostly established and maintained by the prefectures.

Prefectural finance

Since 1878 the central state has granted the prefectures their own tax powers. The most important prefectural taxes in terms of volume today are the "[prefecture] citizen tax " (dō- / fu- / ken-min-zei) , which is levied on the income of both natural and legal persons, and the jigyōzei ("business tax ", another prefectural corporation tax). Together they account for around two thirds of the prefecture's taxes (in fiscal year 2007: 64.5%), other important tax revenues come to 13.8% from the prefectural share of value added tax, to 9.2% from the " automobile tax " (jidōsha-zei) and 5.5% from the "diesel purchase tax " (keiyu-hikitori-zei) linked to road construction expenditure .

Map of the per capita income in the prefectures in fiscal year 2010 in 10,000 yen (400 ≈ 34,000 €)

A common measure of the financial strength of individual prefectures (as well as municipalities) is the "financial strength index " (財政 力 指数, zaiseiryoku shisū ). It is calculated as the quotient of the tax revenue of a local authority divided by the theoretical financial requirement calculated proportionally to the population, in each case on the average of several fiscal years. The subsidies from the financial equalization of the central government from intended taxes, the chihō-kōfu-zei ("regional allocation taxes ": among other things, parts of income tax, corporation tax, value added tax and tobacco tax), are only distributed to prefectures with a financial strength index below 1 and are based on the financial strength index. Together, prefectural taxes (Fy. 2007: 43.1%) and chihō-kōfu-zei make up about 60% of the total income of the prefectures, around one tenth each comes from specific grants from the central government (kokko hojo futankin) and prefecture loans , the remaining sixth comes from from other income.

Since the Liberal Democratic Party first lost power in 1993, the national parliament and central government have implemented several reforms aimed at fiscal decentralization. In 2001, the Koizumi cabinet introduced the so-called sanmi-ittai-kaikaku (三位一体 改革, roughly “three reforms in one”), according to which the financial equalization was reduced through “regional allocation taxes”, the fixed prefectural share of national taxes and the relevant allocations of the central government were increased . And although the fiscal and political possibilities of the prefectures compared to z. For example, if the units of federal states are small, many prefectures have succeeded in consolidating their budgets somewhat in the last few decades and thus reducing their fiscal (and thus political) dependence on the central government. It is true that only two prefectures - Tokyo and Aichi - have had a financial strength index of greater than 1 in the last few years, which means that they have been able to cover their financial needs independently; But with an average financial strength index of 0.5 in the 2007 fiscal year, the prefectures are less dependent on the central government than they were over the decades after the war. However, due to the uneven distribution of the population in Japan, rural exodus and economic concentration, there are considerable differences between the individual prefectures. The “poorest” prefectures with financial strength indices below 0.25 were Shimane and Kōchi in the 2007 fiscal year . In the 2012 fiscal year, the financial strength index of all prefectures was below 1; but the budgetary situation in Aichi, Kanagawa and Tokyo, with values ​​of 0.9, was by far better than in other prefectures; Shimane, Kōchi and Tottori were at the bottom of the list with financial strength indices below 0.25.

In the past, the company's own tax revenue only made up about 30 percent of the budget, the remaining funds were paid by the central government as financial compensation and as subsidies . That is why there was talk of a “30% independence” of the local administrations. This gives the Japanese Ministry of the Interior and other ministries extensive powers to interfere in local decisions. The central administration can prevent unpleasant decisions directly or punish them by withdrawing subsidies. These regulations lead to an extensive standardization of processes and decisions between the prefectures and to a strong concentration of power in Tokyo. Local infrastructure projects are co-financed with funds from Tokyo. As a result, unprofitable or superfluous projects are sometimes decided just in order to steal funding, a problem that is also known in other countries.

Parliaments

The prefectural parliaments ([to- / dō- / fu- / ken-] gikai) are responsible for the adoption of prefectural ordinances , the budgets, the prefecture taxes and the vote on personnel nominations of the governor such. B. the vice governors responsible. Even if they are called "parliaments" in Japan like the local parliaments ( gikai , in the English translation of the constitution it only says assemblies , in the draft constitution of the SCAP stood prefectural [...] legislative assemblies ), they are not parliaments in the constitutional sense, because the Prefectures are only self-governing bodies and only the national parliament can pass laws. The legal basis of today's prefectural parliaments is primarily Article 93 of the 1947 Constitution , which stipulates their existence and direct election, and the “Law on Local Self-Government”. Before 1947, the prefecture parliaments were called "Prefecture Assemblies " ( dō- / fu- / kenkai ; the -dō had a parliament since 1901 and was equivalent to a prefecture since 1946), even if the new names are sometimes used retrospectively as -gikai .

The prefectural parliaments are elected for a term of four years in multiple and one-mandate constituencies by non-transferable individual votes or simple majority voting. They can be made the subject of a recall , dissolve themselves with a four-fifths majority (among the MPs present, who in turn must make up at least three-quarters of the entire parliament) and can be dissolved by the governor in the event of a no-confidence vote against the governor. MPs must have reached the age of 25 and have the right to vote, i.e. be a Japanese citizen and have been registered in a municipality in the relevant prefecture for at least three months. Simultaneous membership in a prefectural parliament and a chamber of the national parliament is excluded.

At the moment, 41 prefectural parliaments are regularly elected in “uniform regional elections”, most recently in April 2015 . In the parliaments of Osaka and Tokyo, the prefectural parties of the respective governors are the strongest parties, in most other prefectures the Liberal Democratic Party , whereby in many prefectures independents make up a significant part of the MPs and many parliamentary groups do not organize themselves exclusively according to party affiliation. In Iwate, after the 2015 election, Ichirō Ozawa's Seikatsu no Tō and the then Democratic Party together formed the strongest parliamentary group, a group made up of former Democrats is also the strongest force in Mie's parliament.

Yamanashi Prefectural Parliament Building

The history of the prefecture parliaments is older than that of the constitution of the empire and the national parliament. They were created in 1878 by the Dajōkan (the imperial government of the early Meiji period) through one of the "three new regional laws " (chihō-san-shimpō) and became a platform for the " movement for people's rights ", which also had parliamentary representation requested by the government at national level. Active and passive voting rights were limited to men and initially very restrictive census restrictions , the age limits were already 20 and 25 years. Each district (gun) and each urban district / "district" ( ku : at that time cities, only in the capitals Kyōto, Osaka and Tokyo already the subdivisions that became districts of the new cities of the same name in 1889) elected up to five members. The elections were initially staggered as they are today for the national upper house: every two years, half of the members of parliament were elected for four years. In particular, the parliaments had the right to decide on the prefectural taxes, which were also created in 1878, and the prefectural budgets. All other decisions were dependent on the approval of the governor, who could also ask the interior minister to dissolve parliament.

In the 1890s, prefectural parliaments were elected indirectly by city councils / district assemblies (shi- / gun-kai) and magistrates / district committees (shi- / gun-sanjikai) according to the newly introduced prefecture order (fukensei) ; but this prefectural order was implemented in different prefectures at different times, in some prefectures not at all, before the newly drafted prefectural order of 1899 came into force, with which prefectural parliament members were re-elected directly. In Okinawa-ken the prefecture order was in effect from 1909. The Hokkaidō received a parliament in 1901, but until the time of occupation according to separate special regulations with even more limited powers than (other) prefectural parliaments. As at the national level, the censorship barriers to the right to vote were gradually relaxed in the early 20th century, finally abolished completely during the " Taishō democracy " of the 1920s, when universal suffrage for men was introduced at the national and local levels . A repeatedly discussed women's right to vote failed due to resistance in parts of both large bourgeois parties and in the manor house and was only realized during the occupation.

Current composition

In 2019, 44 new prefectural parliaments were elected, especially in the uniform regional elections in April . In total, the 47 parliaments at the end of 2019 were composed as follows (survey as of December 31, 2019, but party affiliations according to the candidate reports in the last election):

Aggregated composition of the prefectural parliaments
(as of December 31, 2019)

Political party		Seats
	Liberal Democratic Party	1301
	Kōmeitō	206
	Communist Party of Japan	138
	Constitutional Democratic Party	128
	People's Democratic Party	103
	Social Democratic Party	31
	Nippon Ishin no Kai	18th
	Others (including Osaka Ishin no Kai )	148
	Independent	595
Total (without vacancies)		2668

303 MPs were women, the proportion of women was 11.4%.

Symbols

The flag of the “Metropolis” (official translation of to as prefecture into English) Tokyo in front of the building of their government

Local train with Kumamon decoration

Every prefecture has a symbolic prefecture logo , has chosen a tree, a bird and a flower, and now and again a fish.

For example, prefecture songs are sung at certain sporting events; most, but not all, of them are recognized as prefectural anthems by the respective prefecture administration.

In the last few decades most prefectures have also acquired a PR mascot; the Kumamon from Kumamoto is very successful .

capital Cities

The seat of the prefecture administration (都 道 府 県 庁 所在地, to- / dō- / fu- / ken-chō-shozaichi ) is determined by a prefectural ordinance , commonly also the prefecture capital (県 都, kento ; dōto for Hokkaidō; however not "futo" or " toto " ) called. As a rule, the administrative seat is also the largest city of a prefecture, in many cases the city with the same name as the prefecture is the capital, exceptions are: Iwate (capital: Morioka ), Ibaraki (capital: Mito ), Tochigi (capital: Utsunomiya ), Yamanashi (Capital: Kōfu ) and Okinawa (capital: Naha ) as well as historically the now dissolved communities Miyagi (capital: Sendai ), Gunma (capital: Maebashi ), Kanagawa (capital: Yokohama ), Ishikawa (capital: Kanazawa ), Aichi (capital: Nagoya ), Mie (capital: Tsu ), Shiga (capital: Ōtsu ), Hyōgo (capital: Kobe ), Shimane (capital: Matsue ) and Kagawa (capital: Takamatsu ). In Saitama Prefecture, Sakitama (in today's Gyōda ; capital at the time: Urawa in today's Saitama ) and the prefecture shared the same spelling as埼 玉, but different readings.

Tokyo is a special case: the prefecture capital Tokyo was dissolved in 1943, the seat of the prefecture administration was then the district Kōjimachi , from 1947 the "special district" Chiyoda - the prefectural administration building burned down during the war, but the new building was rebuilt there - since 1991 Shinjuku . According to a statement from the Tokyo Prefecture Governor’s Office, the 23 districts ( Tokyo ) can be collectively considered as the prefecture capital for geographical purposes such as on maps .

Many prefecture capitals became urban cities (-shi) when they were introduced in 1889 . At that time the capital was in most cases the only urban district in a prefecture (see Shi (Japan) #List of the first shi from 1890 ), until further -shi were established in the following decades . In the end, Saitama was the last prefecture whose capital was part of the district: Urawa- machi in North Adachi County only became Urawa-shi in 1934.

See also : List of Japanese prefecture capitals

Election calendar

This election calendar records the dates of the last regular prefecture elections on a monthly basis, i.e. gubernatorial elections and parliamentary elections without by-elections for individual seats. If new elections are not triggered by resignation, death, recall, no-confidence vote, dissolution, etc., the next regular election will probably take place around four years later. The exact election date is set relatively quickly, usually a few months in advance, by the respective election commission.

The electoral periods, which were initially synchronized in 46 prefectures in the first uniform elections in 1947 , are now largely asynchronous, especially in the gubernatorial elections. Currently (as of April 2021) the current governors and parliaments have been elected simultaneously in only eleven prefectures, ten in the uniform regional elections in 2019 and the governor and parliament of Iwate in the elections in autumn 2019.

Prefectural election calendar for the last elections (as of April 2021)

2017
month	Jan.	Feb	March	Apr	May	Jun.	Jul.	Aug	Sep	Oct. ( national election )	Nov	Dec
Governors						Shizuoka	Hyogo	Ibaraki		Miyagi	Hiroshima
Parliaments							Tokyo
2018
month	Jan.	Feb	March	Apr	May	Jun.	Jul.	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Governors		Nagasaki Yamaguchi	Ishikawa	Kyoto		Niigata Shiga		Nagano Kagawa	Okinawa	Fukushima	Wakayama Ehime	Miyazaki saga
Parliaments												Ibaraki
2019
month	Jan.	Feb	March	April ( uniform elections )	May	Jun.	Jul. ( National election )	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Governors	Yamanashi	Aichi		Hokkaidō Kanagawa Fukui Mie Osaka Nara Tokushima Tottori Shimane Ōita		Aomori	Gunma	Saitama	Iwate		Kochi
Parliaments				other 41					Iwate	Miyagi	Fukushima
2020
month	Jan.	Feb	March	Apr	May	Jun.	Jul.	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Governors			Kumamoto				Kagoshima Tokyo			Toyama Okayama	Tochigi
Parliaments						Okinawa
2021
month	Jan.	Feb	March	Apr	May	Jun.	Jul.	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Governors	Yamagata Gifu		Chiba	Akita Fukuoka
Parliaments

Elections without a vote:

• marked with *: Gubernatorial election due to lack of opposing candidates without a vote
• As a rule, in almost all prefectural parliamentary elections there is at least one constituency in which there are only as many candidates as there are seats to be allocated and where consequently no voting takes place. In the 41 unified parliamentary elections in 2019, this was the case in a total of 39% of the constituencies. A rare recent exception was the 2017 Tokyo prefectural parliamentary election.

See also

• List of governors of Japanese prefectures
• Regions of Japan
• License plate (Japan)
• historical provinces of Japan

literature

• Terry MacDougall: Democracy and Local Government in Postwar Japan. in: Takeshi Ishida, Ellis Krauss (Eds.): Democracy in Japan. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh 1989, pp. 139-169.
• Ellis Krauss, Kurt Steiner (Eds.): Political Opposition and Local Politics in Japan. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1980.
• Muramatsu Michio: Center-Local Political Relations in Japan: A Lateral Competition Model. The Journal of Japanese Studies 12: 2 (Summer 1986), pp. 303-328.
• Nobuki Mochida: Fiscal Decentralization and Local Public Finance in Japan. Routledge 2008, ISBN 978-0-415-43746-2 .
• Steven Reed: Is Japanese Government Really Centralized? The Journal of Japanese Studies 8: 1 (Winter 1982), pp. 133-164.
• Steven Reed: Japanese Prefectures and Policymaking. Pittsburgh University Press, Pittsburgh 1986.
• Richard J. Samuels: The Politics of Regional Policy in Japan: Localities Incorporated? Princeton University Press, Princeton 1983.
• Kurt Steiner: Local Government in Japan. Stanford University Press, Stanford 1965.

Web links

Commons : Prefecture of Japan  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• interactive map of the regions and prefectures
• National Governors ' Conference website , Zenkoku Chijikai (Japanese, English National Governors' Association )
• List of all prefectures in Japanese history and their associations (Japanese)
• List of all postcodes and readings of all prefectures, cities, neighborhoods, etc. (Japanese)
• Zenkoku todōfukengikai gichōkai (全国都 道 府 県 議会 議長 会, National Conference of Prefectural Presidents; Japanese)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 明治 4 年 7 月 14 日according to the traditional Japanese calendar
2. ↑ 藤井 徳 行 冨 塚 秀 樹 津 田 博 Fujii Noriyuki, Tomizuka Hideki, Tsuda Hiroshi :生 徒 の 政治 参加 意識 を 高 め る 公民 教育 の 研究. In:学校 教育学 研究 gakkō-kyōikugaku kenkyū (a journal for school education), 2003, vol. 15. pp. 81–86. Hyogo Prefectural University , 2003, accessed February 26, 2021 (Japanese).  Table on p. 83 [pdf 3 of 6], there quoted from:武光誠 Takemitsu Makoto ,藩 と 日本人 Han to Nihonjin ("Han / Principalities and the Japanese"), PHP Shinsho 1999, ISBN 978-4569607979 , p. 195; Changes 1880–87 / Meiji 13–20 have been omitted.
3. ↑ Sōmushō (English MIC) 2009: Local self-government in Japan: Your current situation and problems (PDF file; 821 kB) (Japanese, English (PDF file; 849 kB))
4. ↑ Sōmushō :平 成 24 年度 都 道 府 県 財政 指数 表} (government finances - index table)
5. ↑ Bilingual (Japanese, English) publication series我 が 国 の 地方自治 の 成立 ・ 発 展 (Waga-kuni no chihō jichi no seiritsu, had) , engl. Historical Development of Japanese Local Governance of the Hikaku chihō jichi kenkyū center (比較 地方自治 研究 セ ン タ ー, English The Institute for Comparative Studies in Local Governance , COSLOG) of the Seisaku Kenkyū Daigakuin Daigaku (政策 研究 大 学院 大学, English National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies , GRIPS), Parts 1–4
6. ↑ Sōmushō,地方 公共 団 体 の 議会 の 議員 及 び 長 の 所属 党派 別 人員 調(governors / mayors and deputies in the local authorities by party) , March 31, 2020: ... （令 和 元年 １２ 月 ３１ 日 現在） (... as of December 31, 2019)
7. ↑ Tokyo Prefectural Administration :東京 都 の 県 庁 （都 庁） 所在地 に つ い て(Via the Tokyo Prefectural Administration )