Talk:Municipal mergers and dissolutions in Japan

Relations with the past mergers of all municipalities of Japan

About the "Past Mergers" section in this article:

• "There have been three waves of merger activity between Japanese municipalities, the largest being in 2005. This recent peak is sometimes referred to as "the great Heisei merger" (平成の大合併) as a way of distinguishing it from the earlier two.

The first peak of mergers, known as "the great Meiji merger" (明治の大合併), happened in 1889, when the modern municipal system was established. Before the mergers, existing municipalities were the direct successors of spontaneous hamlets called hanseison (藩政村), or villages under the han system. The rump han system is still reflected in the postal system for rural areas as postal units called ōaza (大字). The Meiji mergers slashed total municipalities to 15,859 from 71,314.

The second peak, called "the great Showa merger" (昭和の大合併), took place in mid-1950s. It reduced the number of the municipalities from 9,868 in October 1953 to 3,472 in June 1961.

Municipal mergers in the island prefectures of Hokkaidō and Okinawa, have followed a different track."

That impressed me; and by the way, are there any other references that relate with the municipal amalagations of Japan that included all the districts and municipalities of each era? jlog3000 (talk) 21:02, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

The Japanese wikipedia has much of that information in various articles (see ja:宮城郡 for one example). The table there shows the villages that made up the current city as they existed in 1889, and then the mergers up until the present-day. I made a similar table in Izumi-ku, Sendai based on data from the city's home page; but, I have not found a very complete (English) source for everywhere in Japan at all (I haven't looked in awhile, but, I doubt that the situation has changed much). Neier (talk) 20:31, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Since when was the time that the cities of Japan started to no longer belong to the districts of Japan? Because now recently most districts have turned into cities as of late. That reminded me of the the administrative division structure of the subdivisions of the Koreas (North and South) when the cities (si) are made by being formerly counties (gun) and reached over 150,000 people. Also each city is subdivided into wards (for those with over 500,000 people and mostly metropolitan cities with about 1,000,000 people and independent of the province(s) that represents or correpsonds) and then into neighborhoods and communities (lv.4) while each county is subdivided into towns and townships (lv.3) and then into villages (lv.4). All I'm saying that it takes me as of now a lot of time of "idealizing" and thinking about the merging and dissolving structure Japan has done. jlog3000 (talk) 18:16, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

As far as I know, districts (郡) have never contained cities (市) under the modern system established in the Meiji era. -Amake (talk) 10:16, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Has it been always thay way even as of April 1889 (with the "modern town and village system") and prior to Meiji era? jlog3000 (talk) 14:31, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

According to the Daijisen Japanese dictionary, the 郡 (then pronounced kōri, rather than the modern gun) under the ritsuryō system contained 里 (sato or ri), 郷 (gō), and 村 (mura), all of which had varying definitions according to the era, but would be "settlements" or "villages" in English. With the Meiji period the 郡 became a government body of itself, but in 1923 it was abolished and only remains for geography/naming purposes these days. So the recent mergers are not "districts becoming cities;" they're towns merging to become cities, and sometimes those towns all happen to belong to the same district (geographical area), so taking the district's name is both a logical and politically neutral option -Amake (talk) 14:53, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

So you're trying to say that those former 70,000+ municipalities or settlements are mostly now the units within a modern municipality that reflects with the postal system? Tell me more about of what you said earlier, Amake. jlog3000 (talk) 12:02, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

(Removing indentation for readability purposes.) Um, yes, all those medieval villages are now part of just 1,781 modern municipalities (as of this post). I'm not sure what you mean by "that reflects with the postal system" or what exactly else you want to know. -Amake (talk) 15:07, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Remove banners

This article looks fine to me. Anyone object to removing the Cleanup and Citations banners? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Filceolaire (talk • contribs) 14:36, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

GDP

The article says,"40% of Japan's GDP consisted of debts from local governments." This does not sound right. Should it be "Local governments' debts equal 40% of Japan's GDP"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.176.189.115 (talk) 07:51, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

October 6, 2008 merger

The city of Kumamoto has absorbed the town of Tomiai (formerly part of Shimomashiki District). The JAWP articles are already updated,but all associated English articles need updating due to adjusted population/area stats... Ranma9617 (talk) 01:49, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Heisei period

There are a great many articles about municipal mergers in Japan, all of which say something like the following:

"Here is a list of mergers in Aomori Prefecture, Japan since the Heisei era."

The difficulty for non-Japanese is the phrase "Heisei era" which really should be Heisei period, the current period. The periods are named for each Emperor of Japan. I have changed three of these articles, but the others remain unchanged, and unclear to non-Japanese. I leave it to others to decide what can be done, if anything. Of course, a Bot could fix it. --DThomsen8 (talk) 20:09, 5 July 2009 (UTC)