Under the gunkuchōson-hensei-hō (郡区町村編制法, "Law on the organization of -gun/-ku/-chō/-son"), both urban and rural districts were further subdivided into urban and rural units (-machi and -mura, i.e. towns and villages in the countryside, but neighbourhood-sized units in larger settlements; for example, there were 13 -machi/-chō and 93 -mura in Ebara District in the 1870s, including five (one "North", three "South", one "New") for Shinagawa alone; the >100 subdivisions of Ebara were merged into only 1 town and 18 villages in 1889, today there are only four special wards left in its former territory: Shinagawa, Meguro, Ōta, Setagaya).

That increased further during the progressing industrialization and the explosive growth of the city in the early 20th century, only temporarily set back by the devastation brought about by the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake.

He became a shinninkan (親任官), meaning he was appointed directly by the Emperor, in the same procedure as a member of the Cabinet, the governors of Chōsen/Korea or Taiwan/Formosa, or an Army General or Navy Admiral.

In 1944/45, the establishment of regional bureaus created new parallel local administrative structures, lacking even the limited control by elected assemblies that prefectures and municipalities featured.

And on the local level, the pre-existing neighbourhood associations (see chōnaikai and Tonarigumi) had been tied into the totalitarian Yokusankai vision and were endowed with far-reaching authority to establish an authoritarian system of control reaching down even to individual citizens.

But the war tide had turned, and soon, the occupation under Douglas MacArthur overturned the wartime centralization, and beyond that, introduced new far-reaching local autonomy rights for prefectures, municipalities and even citizens in the form of "direct demands" (chokusetsu seikyū: recalls, popular initiative referendums for prefectural/municipal by-laws [excluding taxation], petitions, etc.).