How Japan Is Divided: Prefectures, Provinces, and Cities

Open a map of Japan looking for states and the first surprise is the empty space where they should be. There is no Texas-sized chunk with its own constitution. What you get is forty-seven smaller pieces, each with a governor, an assembly, and a personality that shows up in the dialect, the food, and the way an address is written.

English keeps calling them states or provinces. Japanese folds four suffixes into one everyday word: todōfuken (都道府県). And some of the older names — Satsuma, Musashi, Yamato — never really left the conversation, even after they stopped being the government.

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State, province, or prefecture?

Many people mix up state and province. In some countries a province is a slice inside a larger state, now or in the past. Japan is not a federation. The middle layer almost always translates as prefecture — not state, and not the old province either.

The historical provinces (kuni, 国) go back to the ritsuryō maps. They lost political power to the daimyō domains long before Meiji, then the prefectures replaced them as offices. The names stayed: on shop signs, in food, in dialect, in a sentence like “that’s still Shinshū” when someone is talking about Nagano.

Even though Japan is smaller than some single states elsewhere, the prefectures run like mid-level governments, with their own budgets and cultures. There are 47 of them between the national ministries and the city halls. In 1871, when the han were abolished (haihan-chiken, 廃藩置県), more than 300 prefectures appeared overnight. By 1888 the map had cooled down to the 47 still used today.

The eight big blocks — Hokkaidō, Tōhoku, Kantō, Chūbu, Kansai, Chūgoku, Shikoku, and Kyūshū with Okinawa — are regions, not offices. They help when you travel or watch the weather. Taxes, high schools, and the police run through the prefecture. If you want the colors and emblems, they live on the prefecture flags.

Todōfuken

Four administrative labels stack into the word todōfuken (都道府県). That is the generic name for “the prefectures.” The 47 units of Japan break down like this:

• 都 (to) — 1 metropolis: 東京都, Tōkyō-to
• 道 (dō) — 1 circuit: 北海道, Hokkaidō
• 府 (fu) — 2 urban prefectures: 大阪府, Ōsaka-fu, and 京都府, Kyōto-fu
• 県 (ken) — 43 prefectures, for example 愛知県, Aichi-ken

The curious bit is the former capital. Kyōto is written Kyōto-fu (京都府). Inside the city name sits 都 (to), the same “metropolis” character as 東京都 (Tōkyō-to) — yet the suffix is 府 (fu), the urban-prefecture ending. Tokyo’s metropolitan government sits in Shinjuku; there has been no separate “city of Tokyo” as a municipality since 1943.

The 47 prefectures and their seats

Below are the 47 prefectures and the seat of each government, in kanji and hiragana. For Tokyo, Shinjuku is the office, not a classic prefectural capital.

Kanji	Prefecture	Hiragana	Seat	Hiragana
愛知県	Aichi	あいち	Nagoya	なごや
青森県	Aomori	あおもり	Aomori	あおもり
秋田県	Akita	あきた	Akita	あきた
石川県	Ishikawa	いしかわ	Kanazawa	かなざわ
茨城県	Ibaraki	いばらき	Mito	みと
栃木県	Tochigi	とちぎ	Utsunomiya	うつのみや
岩手県	Iwate	いわて	Morioka	もりおか
愛媛県	Ehime	えひめ	Matsuyama	まつやま
大分県	Ōita	おおいた	Ōita	おおいた
大阪府	Ōsaka	おおさか	Ōsaka	おおさか
岡山県	Okayama	おかやま	Okayama	おかやま
沖縄県	Okinawa	おきなわ	Naha	なは
香川県	Kagawa	かがわ	Takamatsu	たかまつ
鹿児島県	Kagoshima	かごしま	Kagoshima	かごしま
京都府	Kyōto	きょうと	Kyōto	きょうと
岐阜県	Gifu	ぎふ	Gifu	ぎふ
熊本県	Kumamoto	くまもと	Kumamoto	くまもと
群馬県	Gunma	ぐんま	Maebashi	まえばし
高知県	Kōchi	こうち	Kōchi	こうち
埼玉県	Saitama	さいたま	Saitama	さいたま
佐賀県	Saga	さが	Saga	さが
滋賀県	Shiga	しが	Ōtsu	おおつ
静岡県	Shizuoka	しずおか	Shizuoka	しずおか
神奈川県	Kanagawa	かながわ	Yokohama	よこはま
島根県	Shimane	しまね	Matsue	まつえ
千葉県	Chiba	ちば	Chiba	ちば
東京都	Tōkyō	とうきょう	Shinjuku	しんじゅく
徳島県	Tokushima	とくしま	Tokushima	とくしま
鳥取県	Tottori	とっとり	Tottori	とっとり
富山県	Toyama	とやま	Toyama	とやま
長崎県	Nagasaki	ながさき	Nagasaki	ながさき
長野県	Nagano	ながの	Nagano	ながの
奈良県	Nara	なら	Nara	なら
新潟県	Niigata	にいがた	Niigata	にいがた
兵庫県	Hyōgo	ひょうご	Kōbe	こうべ
広島県	Hiroshima	ひろしま	Hiroshima	ひろしま
福井県	Fukui	ふくい	Fukui	ふくい
福岡県	Fukuoka	ふくおか	Fukuoka	ふくおか
福島県	Fukushima	ふくしま	Fukushima	ふくしま
北海道	Hokkaidō	ほっかいどう	Sapporo	さっぽろ
三重県	Mie	みえ	Tsu	つ
宮城県	Miyagi	みやぎ	Sendai	せんだい
宮崎県	Miyazaki	みやざき	Miyazaki	みやざき
山形県	Yamagata	やまがた	Yamagata	やまがた
山口県	Yamaguchi	やまぐち	Yamaguchi	やまぐち
山梨県	Yamanashi	やまなし	Kōfu	こうふ
和歌山県	Wakayama	わかやま	Wakayama	わかやま

Cities, towns, and villages

Under every prefecture sits the municipal layer. Japan now has around 1,700 municipalities; of those, about 790 are cities (shi, 市). The count moves because towns and villages keep merging. A full roster of every place would be a book of its own — more useful is the suffix you see on signs and in addresses.

• 市 shi — a city. The largest are seirei shitei toshi (政令指定都市), cabinet-designated cities that take on some prefectural work and split into wards (ku, 区).
• 中核市 chūkaku-shi — core cities with extra duties, one step below the designated cities.
• 郡 gun — a district. Mostly a geographic label now; the office sits in the towns and villages inside it.
• 町 machi / chō — a town, usually inside a district.
• 村 mura / son — a village.
• 特別区 tokubetsu-ku — Tokyo’s 23 special wards, each with a mayor and an assembly.
• 支庁 / 振興局 — subprefectures, especially in Hokkaidō: branch offices of the prefecture, not a separate layer of government.

The old “special city” status (tokurei-shi, 特例市) was abolished in 2015. If an older map still shows it, that is a retired category, not a current office.

If you want the big urban names by size, start with the 20 cities in Japan worth visiting. For the opposite scale, the small cities and towns sit far from the cores — and in Hokkaidō a single prefecture is also a whole region, along the line through Sapporo, Hakodate, Otaru, and Asahikawa.