Japan has three levels of government:
national,
prefectural, and
municipal. The nation is divided into 47 prefectures. Each prefecture consists of numerous municipalities, with 1,719 in total (January 2013 figures)
[1] There are four types of municipalities in Japan:
cities,
towns,
villages and
special wards (the
ku of
Tokyo). In
Japanese, this system is known as , where each
kanji in the word represents one of the four types of municipalities.