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Japan Local Government
Japan is divided into forty-seven administrative
divisions: one
metropolitan district (to--Tokyo), two urban
prefectures
(fu--Kyoto and Osaka), forty-three rural
prefectures
(ken), and one district (d --Hokkaido)
(see
fig. 8).
Large cities are subdivided into wards (ku), and
further
split into towns, or precincts (machi or
cho), or
subdistricts (shicho) and counties (gun).
Each of the forty-seven local jurisdictions has a
governor and
a unicameral assembly, both elected by popular vote every
four
years. All are required by national law to maintain
departments of
general affairs, finance, welfare, health, and labor.
Departments
of agriculture, fisheries, forestry, commerce, and
industry are
optional, depending on local needs. The governor is
responsible for
all activities supported through local taxation or the
national
government.
Cities (shi) are self-governing units
administered
independently of the larger jurisdictions within which
they are
located. In order to attain shi status, a
jurisdiction must
have at least 30,000 inhabitants, 60 percent of whom are
engaged in
urban occupations. City government is headed by a mayor
elected for
four years by popular vote. There are also popularly
elected city
assemblies. The wards (ku) of larger cities also
elect their
own assemblies, which select ward superintendents.
The terms machi and cho designate
self-governing
towns outside the cities as well as precincts of urban
wards. Like
the cities, each has its own elected mayor and assembly.
Villages
(son or mura) are the smallest
self-governing
entities in rural areas. They often consist of a number of
rural
hamlets (buraku) containing several thousand people
connected to one another through the formally imposed
framework of
village administration. Villages have mayors and councils
elected
to four-years terms.
Japan has a unitary rather than a federal system of
government,
in which local jurisdictions largely depend on national
government
both administratively and financially. Although much less
powerful
than its prewar counterpart (the Home Ministry), the
postwar
Ministry of Home Affairs, as well as other national
ministries, has
the authority to intervene significantly in regional and
local
government. The result of this power is a high level of
organizational and policy standardization among the
different local
governments. Because local tax revenues are insufficient
to support
prefectural and city governments, these bodies depend on
the
central government for subsidies. The term "30 percent
autonomy" is
frequently used to describe local government because that
amount of
revenues is derived from local taxation. Yet local
governments are
not entirely passive. People have a strong sense of local
community, are highly suspicious of the central
government, and
wish to preserve the uniqueness of their prefecture, city,
or town.
Some of the more progressive jurisdictions, such as Tokyo
and
Kyoto, have experimented with policies in such areas as
social
welfare that later were adopted by the national
government.
Data as of January 1994
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