Cities of Japan - City Status

City Status

Article 8 of the Local Autonomy Law sets the following conditions for a municipality to be designated as a city:

• Population must generally be 50,000 or greater (原則として人口5万人以上)
• At least 60% of households must be established in a central urban area (中心市街地の戸数が全戸数の6割以上)
• At least 60% of households must be employed in commerce, industry or other urban occupations (商工業等の都市的業態に従事する世帯人口が全人口の6割以上)
• Any other conditions set by prefectural ordinance must be satisfied (他に当該都道府県の条例で定める要件を満たしていること)

The designation is approved by the prefectural governor and the Minister for Internal Affairs.

A city can theoretically be demoted to a town or village when it fails to meet any of these conditions, but such a demotion has not happened to date. The least populous city, Utashinai, Hokkaido, has a population of six thousand, while a town in the same prefecture, Otofuke, Hokkaido, has nearly forty thousand.

Under the Act on Special Provisions concerning Merger of Municipalities (市町村の合併の特例等に関する法律?, Act No. 59 of 2004), the standard of 50,000 inhabitants for the city status has been eased to 30,000 if such population is gained as a result of a merger of towns and/or villages, in order to facilitate such mergers to reduce administrative costs. Many municipalities gained city status under this eased standard. On the other hand, the municipalities recently gained the city status purely as a result of increase of population without expansion of area are limited to those listed in List of former towns or villages gained city status alone.