Talk:Special wards of Tokyo

Use of word "special"

 * personally, I've never heard them called "special" before. Is this just a term devised here?  Whether or not, perhaps the "S" should be capitalised, otherwise it reads as if they are special for some reason, rather than unique.  Eg the following reads rather oddly:
 * Minato has boundaries with these special wards: Chiyoda. Chuo, Shinagawa, Shibuya

Lsmithgo 23:58, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi Lsmithgo,

You raise a good point. The term really is unfamiliar in English. It is, however, an important distinction, and one that's made in Japanese.

Many cities in Japan have subdivisions called ku, which we translate as "ward." (Pardon me if you know this already; perhaps some later readers will benefit from the information.) The old Tokyo City had such divisions until it was abolished during World War II. Later, Tokyo City was never formed again, and to this day, there is no such city. Rather, the former wards have (after various mergers and other restructuring) developed into entities that are just like cities in nearly every respect. These are now officially called tokubetsuku (in Japanese, 特別区). Since tokubetsu means "special," we translate this as "special wards."

This gives rise to a number of difficulties. First, even though their official name is tokubetsuku, people commonly refer to them as simply ku. This goes beyond conversation, as many forms with spaces for addresses ask people to fill in their shi-cho-son-ku, rather than tokubetsuku, even though the ku here applies only to tokubetsuku. Second, nearly all of the special wards call themselves "city" in English, as a look at their English Web sites reveals. So both in Japanese and in English, people use alternatives to "special ward."

What should we do in English? We have various alternatives. I wouldn't mind calling them "cities," and that might give rise to less confusion than the present term does. I chose to call them "special wards" (as you pointed out above), but I'm not at all convinced that it's the best solution. "City" invites one type of confusion; "ward," another. "Special ward" is the exact term, but it's awkward and perhaps misleading in its own way.

As for capitalization, it's a possibility in places such as the one you mentioned. I'm not sure whether I would have capitalized "cities" if I had written "the cities of Chiyoda, ..." in the example.

What would you suggest?

Fg2 07:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I think your explanation is great. Just in English and Japanese, I have always heard them referred to as "23 wards" so personally I would drop the word "special" except when part of the "special" explanation (if you see what I mean...)

Lsmithgo 18:39, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Should be changed to "borough". Tangmo2 05:27, 2 Novermber 2007 (UTC)
 * Can you point to any official precedent for "borough" in the context of Japanese tokubetsuku? Because I've certainly never heard of that.  These are official titles, and you can't just go around making up new translations for them.  -Amake 08:06, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

---Borough is reasonable I guess, but because ward is already well established for reference to Japan's districting I don't think this point is worth pursuing. As for capitalization, I've always been taught to capitalize when it's one body (Shibuya City) but not when it's a series (Tottori, Fukui, and Niigata prefectures). Gunbei (talk) 19:50, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Can they be compared to New York City's boroughs?
You know the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. Are the wards a similar deal? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Craigboy (talk • contribs) 04:56, 8 June 2008 (UTC)


 * It's a useful comparison in some ways. Up to 1943, there was a city government in Tokyo, Tokyo had one mayor, and the old wards under that system had even more similarity to the boroughs of New York. Since 1943, however, Tokyo has not had a mayor or a single municipal government. So the comparison breaks down the way things are now. New York has one mayor and one city council. Tokyo does not have a single, city-wide government; it has 23. Tokyo does not have one mayor; its special wards have 23 mayors. City councils too. And the boroughs are counties; Tokyo's special wards are not, and in Japan cities like them are not in counties. But the short answer is yes, you can compare them in various ways. Fg2 (talk) 09:19, 8 June 2008 (UTC)


 * A similar comparison for UK-ians is the London Borough Councils (one of which is The City of London) that form Greater London, and the Manchester Borough Councils (one of which is The City of Manchester) that form Greater Manchester. Jgharston (talk) 17:35, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Why is that comparable? Citizens in Okutama, Tokyo or Ōshima, Tokyo take part in elections for Metropolitan assembly and governor who then decide on, e.g. (before 2001) how garbage disposal in Chiyoda, Tokyo or Shinjuku, Tokyo is handled, but not vice versa because unlike special wards, cities, towns and villages of Tokyo have always had their local autonomy*, keep their municipal taxes and decide locally what to do with them. What comparable asymmetrical structure is there in Greater London or New York?
 * unless they decide to leave things to the prefectural government as most municipalities of Tokyo have done with firefighting since the 1960s. But that's by choice. --Asakura Akira (talk) 01:51, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Citizens in Islington, Greater London or Richmond, Greater London take part in elections for the Greater London Authority and the Mayor of London, who then decide on Greater-London-wide issues such as public transport planning and funding, police, emergency planning. The closest analogy for Tokyo Special Wards for UK readers is London Borough Councils. Jgharston (talk) 20:23, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
 * But citizens in Canterbury don't and Kent isn't part of London. Greater London consists exclusively of boroughs [+city of London], whereas only 23 of Tokyo's 62 municipalities are special wards – namely those on the area of former Tokyo City. But the others are cities, towns or villages as in any other prefecture: Hachiōji City, Tokyo is a city not a special ward, neither are Hinohara village or [Izu-]Ōshima town, yet they are part of Tokyo, take part in Metropolitan elections and thus decide over municipal matters of the special wards [or: decided – since the 2000 reforms, the differences between special wards and other cities in Tokyo are fewer]. --Asakura Akira (talk) 04:36, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Article title format
Outside of the fact that the Japanese insist on translating "ku" in the Tokyo case to "city", as in Nerima City or Minato City, instead of as "ward", is there a reason that we list all of these as, for example, Kita, Tokyo, when other North Wards in Japan are called Kita-ku, Hamamatsu, Kita-ku, Kobe, Kita-ku, Kyoto, etc.? I have never heard anyone in normal conversation refer to any of these places without the word "Ward" or "-ku"; I certainly have never heard anyone use "City" in this context in normal conversation. In Japanese, of course, this is always phrased as 「～区」 and not as 「～市」; after all, it's a ward, not a city. So... LordAmeth (talk) 04:34, 17 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I suppose it's because legally these tokubetsuku are not ku, they're cities, so we list them like other cities as city, prefecture. Fg2 (talk) 04:52, 17 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. Thanks. LordAmeth (talk) 10:49, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

unique to Tokyo
The article calls the structure "unique to Tokyo" but doesn't distinguish them from, say, the boroughs of New York City. What's the key difference? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 14:29, 21 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Unique to Tokyo within Japan, though as discussed below Osaka has been planning to annex the surrounding areas and special-ward/boroughise itself. Jgharston (talk) 17:38, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Odaiba
Most of the descriptions of various areas seem to make sense, but I'm curious about Odaiba; the description says: "A large, reclaimed, waterfront area that has become one of Tokyo's most popular shopping and entertainment districts."

Odaiba is indeed a reclaimed waterfront area, and certainly has shopping and entertainment, but is it really one of Tokyo's "most popular" districts for such? Tokyo has a lot of very popular shopping/entertainment areas, and Odaiba's always seemed pretty blah. Are there numbers to support that claim...?

--Snogglethorpe (talk) 04:43, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Special wards of other prefectures
Special wards will probably not remain unique to Tokyo in the long term – once Osaka City & Sakai City disintegrate into special wards of Osaka this article needs to be rewritten or split up (I think under the envisioned timetable, the final hurdle, the referendum to abolish Osaka City [+ other affected municipalities] is to be held in 2014, with the actual abolition of Osaka City to take place in 2015 – unless Hashimoto stumbles and not everything goes as smoothly as it has until now...). I do not want to impose whether this article should cover special wards (tokubetsu-ku) in general, as the introduction suggests, or only those of Tokyo, as the title suggests. And there is still time to discuss the future article structure in general as other articles will have to be reorganized as well (if you want to keep the Special wards of Tokyo/Tokyo City/Tokyo pattern: merge Osaka & Sakai into Special wards of Osaka, new articles Osaka City and Sakai City about administrative history, move Osaka Prefecture to Osaka). So, I put this up here on the talk page for discussion: I propose to remove the phrase "and is unique to Tokyo" from the introduction and insert a section at the end along the lines of:

== Special wards of other prefectures ==
 * Until now, special wards have been unique to Tokyo. The "Osaka Metropolis plan law" (Ōsaka-to-kōsō-hō) was passed by the National Diet in 2012. It gives major cities the option to dissolve into special wards. The prefectures involved would become "Metropolises", i.e. prefectures with some municipal authority in the area of special wards, like Tokyo in all but name: an option for ordinary prefectures (-dō, -ken or -fu) that set up special wards to formally change their names to "Metropolis" (-to) is not included in the law. The exact division of responsibilities and tax revenues between prefectural/"Metropolitan" and special ward governments is in each case subject to negotiation during the preparations for setting up special wards and must be approved by the assemblies of the dissolving municipalities and eventually the citizens in a referendum. This could result in special wards of other prefectures having more administrative authority than those of Tokyo – or even more than ordinary municipalities in other prefectures as Osaka Metropolis plan proponent Tōru Hashimoto has argued. Unlike Tokyo City's original dissolution during the Pacific War which had been part of a centralization of power by the (until 1947 unelected) central and prefectural executive, a future reorganization of cities as special wards would only replace the current balance between central, prefectural and municipal governments which each have elected legislatures and executive heads (indirectly elected in the central government) with a new one where several special ward governments, each with elected assembly and mayor, take the place of previous cities.


 * {| class="wikitable"

!Distribution of administrative responsibilities !colspan="2" | Current "Tokyo Metropolis" !colspan="2" | Current Osaka Prefecture !colspan="2" | Hashimoto's argument for an Osaka "Metropolis" (Designated cities) || rowspan="2" style="width:2em; border-top:hidden" | (not municipalities, no elected councils or mayors)
 * +Possible division of responsibilites between prefectural and municipal governments in a future "Osaka Metropolis"
 * -valign="top"
 * ↑ Wider area services
 * colspan="2" rowspan="3" style="white-space:nowrap;" | "Tokyo Metropolis"
 * colspan="2" style="white-space:nowrap;" | Osaka Prefecture
 * colspan="2" rowspan="2" | Osaka "Metropolis"
 * -valign="top"
 * rowspan="4" | Osaka City [and Sakai City]
 * rowspan="4" | Osaka City [and Sakai City]
 * -valign="top"
 * rowspan="4" | Special wards || rowspan="4" | Other municipalities
 * -valign="top"
 * style="width:2em; border-top:hidden" | || rowspan="3" | Other municipalities
 * rowspan="3" | Other municipalities
 * -valign="top"
 * rowspan="2" | Special wards
 * valign="bottom" | ↓ Local services
 * valign="top" | Wards
 * rowspan="2" | Special wards
 * valign="bottom" | ↓ Local services
 * valign="top" | Wards
 * valign="top" | Wards
 * }



I included the table from Hashimoto's TV appearance (Segment on YouTube: 橋下知事∇1「大阪都構想を解説、選挙でリーダー選ぶ区長公選制) because I think it may be illustrative to many readers, but maybe others disagree. (I'm not sure whether even today all citizens of Osaka have fully realized what the Osaka Metropolis plan is about. But it is probably a matter of political point of view (and depends on the implementation) whether you follow Hashimoto's argument that municipal governments will actually have more power than elsewhere in an Osaka "Metropolis".) Welcomes any feedback: Asakura Akira (talk) 20:16, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Follow-up proposal: Separate "Wards of Tokyo" from "Special wards"?
Fast forward to 2017 and Hashimoto has stumbled in several ways, even if he and his followers & successors, I think, have not yet given up fully on the "Metropolis plan" although they face the usual dilemma: How soon after a failed referendum can you hold another one on the same/a very similar question? In any case, for the time being, there is no need to reorganize all Osaka-related articles and categories. But, wouldn't it still be helpful to split this article into two as in the Japanese Wikipedia? This is only a suggestion because possibly, it might make the subject easer to understand if one separates the legal status of a special ward entirely from the geographical stuff related specifically to the dense urban East of Tokyo/ex-Tokyo city (or what some other language versions of Wikipedia define simply as Tokyo [if no longer as an adminstrative unit in many other ways still: city] as opposed to Tokyo (prefecture/"Metropolis"/-fu/-to); but the question of whether the [ex-]city or the whole prefecture/"Metropolis" gets the preference for the plain article title Tokyo is not the issue here.). But I have no firm opinion on this, and am no English native speaker. So, others should discuss and decide. Asakura Akira (talk) 14:58, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
 * 1) An article on "special wards" (tokubetsu-ku, ja:特別区) which would be restricted to the legal status of a "special ward" in general and its various changes since its introduction under MacArthur – and one could mention that the original 1947 LAL also provided for tokubetsu-shi ("special cities", ja:特別市; just like special wards are city-independent/city-level wards, special cities would have been prefecture-independent/prefecture-level cities; on first approach, comparable to Korean 特別市 (my Korean is insufficient, but from memory I think it's tukbyeol-si); not to be confused with the much more recent Special [case] cites/tokurei-shi which are just a variant of large cities with some circumscribed additional responsibilities),
 * 2) One article about the wards (area/section/whatever) of Tokyo (Tōkyō-to kubu, ja:東京都区部) to cover the wards of Tokyo specifically or maybe more generally the wards in Tokyo, i.e. the area of Tokyo City regardless of administrative status. After all, there were 15 "wards" in Tokyo before Tokyo City was created in 1889 (though I personally prefer to call the 1878–89 -ku "urban districts" or something like that because beyond the three capitals these -ku were cities at-large, e.g. Hiroshima-ku, Nagasaki-ku, Sakai-ku). And the 35 wards were still there after Tokyo City was abolished in 1943. So, they were wards of Tokyo before and after they were wards of Tokyo City, and they had been wards of Tokyo long before they were turned into 23 special wards in 1947.

"Everyday English"
"in everyday English only Tokyo as a whole would be referred to as a city."

There is no citation for this and it makes no sense. I don't know a single English-speaking Japanese resident who refers to Tokyo as a city. Every single person I know refers to Tokyo as a Prefecture, because that's what it is. And they refer to the 23-ku as either "the twenty-three ku", or as "East Tokyo" (contrasted with West Tokyo, which is everywhere in mainland Tokyo Prefecture outside of the 23-ku).

Perhaps they mean "everyday English as spoken by people unfamiliar with Japanese political boundaries"?

Sadly, I don't think there's going to be a very good citation for it, but I think, "and among people unfamiliar with specifics of Japanese political divisions, when people refer to Tokyo, they usually mean the 23-ku, not Tokyo Prefecture."


 * I don't know about "everyday English", but at least in the States, it is a very common misconception that Tokyo is a city, and when most people think of "the city of Tokyo", what they're really thinking of is the area that was formerly Tokyo City, and is now comprised of the 23 wards. A Vexed Lens (talk) 17:09, 25 March 2021 (UTC)