Talk:Japanese addressing system

Prefectures (todofuken) and provinces (kuni)

"The names of many prefectures in Japan are the same as those of former regions; e.g. Gifu prefecture for Gifu province."

In fact this is incorrect. The prefecture of Gifu consists of former Mino and Hida provinces. There was no province named Gifu in prior to the Haihan Chiken in the 19th century.

I cannot think right off my mind of any prefecture that retained provincial names. I thought the aim of the Haihan Chiken was to dismantle the former fiefdoms of the shogunate.

For instance:

Province	Haihan Chiken, phase 1	Haihan Chiken, phase 2
Owari Province (Owari no Kuni, Bishu)	Prefecture of Nagoya (Nagoya Ken)	Prefecture of Aichi (Aichi Ken)
Mikawa Province (Mikawa no Kuni, Sanshu)	Prefecture of Aichi (Aichi Ken)	Prefecture of Aichi (Aichi Ken)

shi/gun vs. county

I don't know anything about other countries, but it seems to me that "shi/gun" in Japan are analogous to "counties" in the US. So then the statement that "shi/cities" in Japan belong to the prefecture makes sense.

I know that the official translation for "shi" is "city" so I guess it can't be helped, but functionally, I think "county" is a better translation (from an American point of view). This especially works for "gun" also, which like "county" also have a rural connotation (I always thought names like "Los Angeles County" sounded odd...perhaps we should make a new translation of "shi" and adopt it in the U.S.).

Any opposition to adding a note in the article along these lines, like "shi/gun are analogous to "counties" in the US"? It would be nice to get a British perspective as well. Ken6en 02:50, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Being from Massachusetts, which has only vestiges of a county system and very little active county government, I don't see the analogy between "shi" and "county." A shi seems very closely analogous to a city and a gun seems very closely analogous to a county. A shi, like a city, has a mayor and a city council; I don't think a gun does.

In Mass, "county" does not have a rural connotation, since cities like Boston are (or were) as much part of counties as is the countryside. So when it comes to aspects of "gun" that disagree with my notion of "county" the first thing that comes to mind is that the "ken" "gun" don't include "shi" but only "machi" and "mura" whereas in Massachusetts the counties include(d) both. Now of course I recognize that the situation of counties in Massachusetts is different from that in the rest of the US, but it does make the value of "county" as an explanation of "shi" less valuable (and I still don't see it).

Can you say more specifically which aspects of shi correspond to those of counties? Fg2 08:04, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

I'm guessing that you made a typo at the end, saying "ken" instead of "gun"? I think counties are basically the same everywhere in the US...in big cities they don't do much. So they are more prominent in rural areas, i.e. "best apple pie in the tri-county area".

Right! I found myself erasing that mistake several other times as I was typing. Fg2 10:13, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Anyway, I guess I wasn't clear...I feel like gun are like "(rural) counties" and shi are like "(urban) counties". So they both report to the ken. In US urban counties, there is usually one dominant city (machi), while Japanese shi are often divided into equally sized machi that usually leave governing to the shi county...this is the biggest difference. In some semi-rural shi, the machi have a small legacy government (a "branch shiyakusho") with sparsely populated lands clumped into token machi.

But what is identical is the hierarchy. In the US, you are always in a particular county and state. In Japan you are always in a particular gun/shi and ken. This always helped me straighten things out...I thought this might help out others get it straight too.

I guess a better way to say all this is that shi are a combined US urban county and city. Population-wise and area-wise I think this works. Ken6en 09:16, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Having been through the "Great Heisei Mergers" I think I've figured out some of the above. Whether the merger is a marriage of equal partners or absorption into a bigger neighbor, the shi/cho/son that merge each have a "city" hall that in many cases becomes a "branch shiyakusho" (a "legacy" city hall) except for the one that becomes the new shiyakusho. I think of the branches as having most of the citizen-contact functions of government, whereas the main shiyakusho also has the city council and mayor overseeing an administration that's centralized (or becomes so as time goes on). I guess I see an analogy in "leaving the governing to the county" as I understand counties outside of Mass (again, I'm weak in that area). It might make a lot more sense to the vast majority of Americans who aren't from Massachusetts!

A long time ago a friend remarked that the ken aren't like states; they're counties. This shocked me into thinking differently about all the relationships. In area, his analogy is rather good. After all, Japan is the size of a (large) US state, and with 48 divisions each one is pretty close to county size. In population, a ken is more like a state, and in government the analogy with a state is closer still. At the next level down, every bit of the prefecture is in either a gun or a shi, while in Mass every bit of the state is (was) in a county. So there the analogy makes some sense too.

It breaks down at the next level, but then again, analogies so often do...

Now, whether it belongs in the article on Japanese addressing system, or in Municipality of Japan might be the next question. Fg2 10:13, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

I started poking around the related　pages and I realized that there is a ton of info scattered across several pages related to this stuff. Each article has a different focus, but information overlaps a lot. Then there's various category links too, but cross referencing isn't very complete/consistent yet. What I thought would be a one line edit might be more like 10 documents. So I'll just step back and let the "full-timers" figure this stuff out. Ken6en 17:31, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Ken6en 04:39, 11 September 2005 (UTC): I went ahead and took a stab at it. Also changed Districts of Japan and Municipality of Japan. Hope this helps someone unravel the mystery of the Japanese addressing system.

chome-ban-go vs chome-banchi-ban

The article is quite informative, but actually when trying to figure out the numbers on addresses in Tokyo, it is either innacurate or incomplete.

Most of the addresses that I know of follow the 1-2-3 format mentioned in the article, but these numbers correspond to chome, ban, go (not chome, banchi, ban as in the article) and are written 1丁目２番３号.

Well, I am not expert enough on this subject to say for certain, but the article does not correspond to the addresses that I see on my alien registration card, my employer's address, etc.

My guess would be that the article has confused the contraction of "banchi" to "ban" with the final house number which is "go", but as I said I am not an expert.

Postal code 648-0001

Can anyone tell me what city this is? Chris 02:40, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

[1] says Hashimoto, Wakayama. Jpatokal 00:08, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you so much for that! Chris 02:35, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Aza under -shi

The article implies that -aza divisions exist only in -gun areas. In Sendai, at least, there are -aza under the -ku, at the same level as -machi. For example, Tohoku University's engineering campus is in Sendai-shi, Aoba-ku, Aramaki-aza. Sendai-shi is pretty big, and encompasses a bunch of wilderness, so the -aza are used in less populated areas that are still within the borders of Sendai-shi. I have no idea whether this is generally true or a peculiarity of Sendai, so I leave it to others to do with this information what they will.