Comprehensive information and links about Japan Municipality of Japan

Municipality of Japan . The nation is divided into 47 prefectures. Each prefecture consists of numerous municipalities. There are four types of municipalities in Japan: cities, towns, villages and special wards (the i The status of a municipality, if it is a village, town or city, is decided by the prefectural government. 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.

A i). These, however, are not municipalities. The only wards that are municipalities are the special wards of Tokyo.

The following are major cities:

Note that Tokyo is not a city. Tokyo Prefecture encompasses 23 special wards, each a city unto itself, as well as many cities, towns and even villages on the Japanese mainland and outlying islands. For information on the former city of that name, see Tokyo City; for information about present-day Tokyo Prefecture, see Tokyo.

See List of cities in Japan for the complete list.

Each of the 23 special wards of Tokyo is legally equivalent to a city, though sometimes 23 special wards as a whole is regarded as one city.

Except for these wards of Tokyo, all large cities are of cities designated by government ordinance.

i are also used for addresses in urban areas. These instances are not municipalities. In rare cases, a i (town by name). As an example of a cho that is not a municipality, Awaji-cho is a small neighborhood within a special ward in Tokyo. Even though it has the word i, at the end, Awaji-cho is not a town. Many such cho were previously towns that coalesced to form larger cities (and many were not).

Similarly, the i) are not current municipalities but (almost obsolete) names of geographical regions similar to prefectures.