Japan is divided into 47 prefectures (都道府県, todōfuken, [todoːɸɯ̥ꜜkeɴ] ⓘ), which rank immediately below the national government and form the country's first level of jurisdiction and administrative division.

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.

Ordinances and budgets are enacted by a unicameral assembly (議会, gikai) whose members are elected for four-year terms.

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.

Though the fiefs have long since been dismantled, merged, and reorganized multiple times, and been granted legislative governance and oversight, the rough translation stuck.

In 2003, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi proposed that the government consolidate the current prefectures into about 10 regional states (so-called dōshūsei).

The central government delegates many functions (such as education and the police force) to the prefectures and municipalities, but retains the overall right to control them.

De facto, prefectures as well as municipalities have often been less autonomous than the formal extent of the local autonomy law suggests, because of national funding and policies.

Following the capitulation of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868, Tōkyō-fu (an urban prefecture like Kyoto and Osaka) was set up and encompassed the former city area of Edo under the Fuhanken sanchisei.

The reorganisation's aim was to consolidate the administration of the area around the capital by eliminating the extra level of authority in Tokyo.

After the war, Japan was forced to decentralise Tokyo again, following the general terms of democratisation outlined in the Potsdam Declaration.

Many of Tokyo's special governmental characteristics disappeared during this time, and the wards took on an increasingly municipal status in the decades following the surrender.

[citation needed] In the occupation reforms, special wards, each with their own elected assemblies (kugikai) and mayors (kuchō), were intended to be equal to other municipalities even if some restrictions still applied.

Existing cross-prefectural fora of cooperation between local governments in the Tokyo metropolitan area are the Kantō regional governors' association (Kantō chihō chijikai)[9][10] and the "Shutoken summit" (formally "conference of chief executives of nine prefectures and cities", 9 to-ken-shi shunō kaigi).

There are some differences in terminology between Tokyo and other prefectures: police and fire departments are called chō (庁) instead of honbu (本部), for instance.

Today, since the special wards have almost the same degree of independence as Japanese cities, the difference in administration between Tokyo and other prefectures is fairly minor.

Its current name is believed to originate from Matsuura Takeshiro, an early Japanese explorer of the island.

The Meiji government originally classified Hokkaidō as a "Settlement Envoyship" (開拓使, kaitakushi), and later divided the island into three prefectures (Sapporo, Hakodate, and Nemuro).

These were consolidated into a single Hokkaido Department (北海道庁, Hokkaido-chō) in 1886, at prefectural level but organized more along the lines of a territory.

The Classical Chinese character from which this is derived implies a core urban zone of national importance.

[14] From north to south (numbering in ISO 3166-2:JP order), the prefectures of Japan and their commonly associated regions are: Here are some territories that were lost after World War II.