Administrative divisions of Japan
type of region within Japan
The bureaucratic administration of Japan is divided into three basic levels: national, prefectural, and municipal. They are defined by the Local Autonomy Act of 1947.
Below the national government there are 47 prefectures, six of which are further subdivided into subprefectures to better service large geographical areas or remote islands.
The 1718 municipalities (792 cities, 743 towns, and 183 villages) and 23 special wards of Tokyo are the lowest level of government; the twenty most-populated cities outside Tokyo Metropolis are known as designated cities, and are subdivided into wards.
Prefectural divisions
The top tier of administrative divisions are the 47 prefectural entities: 43 prefectures (県, ken) proper, two urban prefectures (府, fu; Osaka and Kyōto), one "circuit" (道, dō; Hokkaidō), and one "metropolis" (都, to; Tokyo Metropolis). Although different in name, they are functionally the same.
Ken
"Prefecture" (県, ken) are the most common types of prefectural divisions total of 43 ken. The kanji (character) from which this is derived means "county".
To
Tokyo Metropolis is referred to as a "metropolis" (都, to) after the dissolution of Tokyo City in 1943, Tōkyō-fu (Tokyo Prefecture) was upgraded into Tōkyō-to and the former Tokyo City's wards were upgraded into special wards. The kanji (character) from which this is derived means "capital".
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Administrative divisions of Japan” as type of region within Japan. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as type of region within Japan. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 6, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q1850442. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1718 and 1943.
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This entry incorporates text from “Administrative divisions of Japan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.