Merger and dissolution of municipalities of Japan

takes place after one or more than one municipality reach consensus to do so.

March 31, 2006 was the deadline set by the revised municipality merger promotion law. The law was revised to streamline debt-ridden local governments and to create larger municipalities so more administrative power could be transferred to the local level.

On April 1, 2005, Japan had a total of 2,190 local governments. Now, this has further decreased to about 1,822, more than 40 percent less than the number of municipalities in 1999. The government's stated goal is around 1,000, although no distinct timetable was provided. Of the 1,822 municipalities, 198 villages remain, along with 777 cities and 847 towns.

List of mergers and dissolutions of municipalities in Japan shows mergers and dissolutions of municipalities that took place in recent years.

Background

Most of Japan's rural municipalities largely depend on subsidies from the central government. They are often criticized for spending money for wasteful public enterprises to keep their employment. The central government, which also suffers financial difficulty, wishes to urge mergers and make the municipal system more efficient. Although the government purports to respect self-determination of the municipalities, some consider the policy to be virtually compulsory. As a result of mergers, some cities such as Daisen, Akita temporally have very large city assemblies.

Some people draw a ; they consider that the ultimate goal is to change Japan into a union consisting of more autonomous states. So far the mergers are limited to the local municipalities, but mergers of prefectures are also planned in some regions of Japan.

History

Japanese municipalities have repeated mergers in the modern history according with the changes of its society. The mergers around 2005 make the third peak of them. It is sometimes called "the great Heisei merger" (平成の大合併) for distinguishing it from the former 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. Until then, there were direct successors of spontaneous hamlets called hanseison (藩�"�村), or villages under the han system. Today they remains as postal units called ōaza (大字) in rural areas. Through the reformation, the total of the municipalities decreased from 71,314 to 15,859.

The second peak, called "the great Showa merger" (昭�'�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.

It is noted that the island of Hokkaido, as well as Okinawa, followed a different history.

Naming of new municipalities

Naming is not a negligible matter. Disagreement on a name sometimes brings the match to break up.

If a city is far larger than other towns which join in it, no arguments take place; the city's name simply survives. However, if their sizes have no much differences, lengthy disputes begin. Sometimes the problem can be solved by adopting their district's name. Another easy solution is simple compounding of their names, but this method, relatively common in Europe, is unusual in Japan. Instead, the Japanese often abbreviate them. For example, Ōta (大�"�) ward of Tokyo is a portmanteau of Ōmori (大森) and Kamata (�'��"�). Toyoshina, Nagano is an extreme example. It is an acronym of the four antecedent villages: Toba, Yoshino, Shinden, and Nariai.

Another common way is borrowing a surrounding famous placename plus direction, like Kita-kyushu 'north Kyushu', Higashi-osaka 'east Osaka', and Shikoku-chuo 'central Shikoku'.Nishi-tokyo 'west Tokyo' sounds strange for some Japanese, because Tokyo itself means 'east capital'. Other towns pick up ordinary nouns with good connotations, such as peace, green, or prosperity.

A characteristic of the Heisei mergers is a rapid increase of hiragana names. The names of Japan's cities used to be written in Kanji exclusively. The first instance of 'hiragana municipalities' was Mutsu, Aomori (むつ) renamed in 1960, and their number will reach to 45 in April 2006. They include Tsukuba (つくば), Kahoku (かほく), Sanuki (さぬき), and Saitama (さいたま), which was upgraded to a designated city in 2003.