Prefectures of Japan
Japan is divided into 47 prefectures (, , ), which rank immediately below the national government and form the country's first level of jurisdiction and administrative division. They include 43 prefectures proper (, ken), two urban prefectures (, fu: Osaka and Kyoto), one regional prefecture (, dō: Hokkaidō) and one metropolis (, to: Tokyo). In 1868, the Meiji Fuhanken sanchisei administration created the first prefectures (urban fu and rural ken) to replace the urban and rural administrators (bugyō, daikan, etc.) in the parts of the country previously controlled directly by the shogunate and a few territories of rebels/shogunate loyalists who had not submitted to the new government such as Aizu/Wakamatsu. In 1871, all remaining feudal domains (han) were also transformed into prefectures, so that prefectures subdivided the whole country. In several waves of territorial consolidation, today's 47 prefectures were formed by the turn of the century. In many instances, these are contiguous with the ancient ritsuryō provinces of Japan. Each prefecture's chief executive is a directly elected . Ordinances and budgets are enacted by a unicameral whose members are elected for four-year terms. Under a set of 1888–1890 laws on local government until the 1920s, each prefecture (then only 3 -fu and 42 -ken; Hokkaidō and Okinawa-ken were subject to different laws until the 20th century) was subdivided into and and each district into and . Hokkaidō has 14 subprefectures that act as and of the prefecture. Some other prefectures also have branch offices that carry out prefectural administrative functions outside the capital. Tokyo, the capital of Japan, is a merged city-prefecture; a metropolis, it has features of both cities and prefectures. Background The West's use of "prefecture" to label these Japanese regions stems from 16th-century Portuguese explorers and traders use of "prefeitura" to describe the fiefdoms they encountered there. Its original sense in Portuguese, however, was closer to "municipality" than "province". Today, in turn, Japan uses its word ken (), meaning "prefecture", to identify Portuguese districts while in Brazil the word "Prefeitura" is used to refer to a city hall. Those fiefs were headed by a local warlord or family. Though the fiefs have long since been dismantled, merged, and reorganized multiple times, and been granted legislative governance and oversight, the rough translation stuck. The Meiji government established the current system in July 1871 with the abolition of the han system and establishment of the . Although there were initially over 300 prefectures, many of them being former han territories, this number was reduced to 72 in the latter part of 1871, and 47 in 1888. The Local Autonomy Law of 1947 gave more political power to prefectures, and installed prefectural governors and parliaments. In 2003, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi proposed that the government consolidate the current prefectures into about 10 regional states (so-called dōshūsei). The plan called for each region to have greater autonomy than existing prefectures. This process would reduce the number of subprefecture administrative regions and cut administrative costs. The Japanese government also considered a plan