City (市, shi) - A local administrative unit
in Japan. Cities are ranked on the same level as towns (町,
machi) and villages (村, mura), with the difference that they
are not a component of districts (郡, gun). Like other
contemporary administrative units, they are defined by the
Local Autonomy Law of 1947.
Generally, a village or town can be promoted to a city when
its population increases above fifty thousand, and a city
can (but need not) be demoted to a town or village when its
population decreases below fifty thousand. The
least-populated city, Utashinai, Hokkaido, has population of
mere six thousand, while a town in the same prefecture,
Otofuke, Hokkaido, has nearly forty thousand. Larger cities
of at least 200,000 inhabitants can achieve one of three
special statuses: special city, core city, or “designated”
city.
Most people outside Japan think of Tokyo, Japan’s capital,
as a city, but under Japanese law it is a special
subregional administrative unit called a to (都, to) that has
prefectural authority (and is therefore counted as one of
the country’s 47 prefectures). Its official name is Tokyo
Metropolis (and that of its government, Tokyo Metropolitan
Government), and it has incorporated cities within its
jurisdiction.
Information source: “Cities of Japan.” wikipedia.org.
Article date: 4 Feb. 2008. Retrieved: Wikipedia. 2 Mar.
2008 <Cities of Japan>. |
