At 11:27 AM 4/21/2005, Richard Lawson wrote:
Just FYI, Nerima isn't a city by itself, it's part of Tokyo.
Like, say, Greenwich Village isn't really a city, it's just
a part of New York City.
Umm, Richard? Nerima actually *is* a city
Technically, Tokyo is a metropolitan district ("-to") instead
of a city ("-shi") and all of the wards ("-ku") in Tokyo are
actually cities that fall under special administrative rules
found only in Tokyo.
Hmm. That's not what I was taught. There *are* cities that are fully
functional cities while still being in Tokyo, but I was taught that Nerima
was *not* one of those, that it was "merely" a ward.
From Wikpedia:
<snip>
Errk. You would take the word of a user-written database over ALL of the
"official" sources? Excuse me a moment while I boggle a bit in the corner.
From Encarta:
---------------------
Technically, there is no such thing as a city of Tokyo, as that designation
was abolished in a government reorganization in 1943. Instead, Tokyo is a
special administrative unit similar to a prefecture, the largest units of
local government in Japan. It is properly called Tokyo-to or Tokyo
Metropolis and consists of 23 special wards (ku), 26 cities (shi), seven
towns, and eight villages. Tokyo Metropolis covers an area of about 2180 sq
km (about 840 sq mi). The 23 wards, which comprise the area that used to be
the city of Tokyo, cover about 620 sq km (about 240 sq mi). The rest of
Tokyo Metropolis is the Tama district, a large suburban area stretching to
mountains in the west, and two chains of small islands, the Izu Islands
(Japanese Izu-Shichito) and the Bonin Islands (Japanese Ogasawara-Gunto),
to the south in the Pacific Ocean. The Keihin Industrial Region is a term
used to describe Tokyo and the surrounding industrial area, referring most
specifically to the combination of Tokyo and two nearby coastal cities to
the south, Kawasaki and Yokohama.
Microsoft � Encarta � Encyclopedia 2005 � 1993-2004 Microsoft Corporation.
All rights reserved.
---------------------
This entry agrees with what is on the Tokyo Metro Government website. Also,
please note that the date when this governmental reorganization was done is
the early 40's. IIRC, the 23 "special wards" were finalized in 1947.
Even the Wikipedia you are quoting has an entry for "23 Special Wards"
which includes the following paragraph:
---------------------
Since the 1970s, the special wards of Tokyo have exercised a considerably
higher degree of autonomy than other wards, making them more like
independent cities than districts of a city. Each special ward has its own
elected mayor (kuchou) and assembly (kugikai).
---------------------
/shrug Maybe things have changed since 2003 and Nerima is now officially
a "city". I don't keep up-to-date on these things so much. Still, at
least at the time of the manga (1994), Nerima was considered a "ward" and
not a "city" by Japanese standards.
For official legal status I'll partially agree with you; the Japanese Diet
didn't give the Tokyo wards legal chihou-koukyou-dantai status until the
year 2000, but for all intents and purposes the wards have been
semi-autonomous cities since the early 70's.
We're also quite likely splitting hairs here, and for the purposes of fanfic
it doesn't much matter whether you refer to Nerima as a city or not. =)
To some extent yes and to others no. For instance, any fanfic that has to
deal with any government office should note that there *is* a "Nerima City
Hall" to visit (as well as one for Minato, Shinjuku, yada yada yada) and
that if your character is meeting a top government leader, he or she is
meeting the *Mayor* of Nerima or the *Governor* of Tokyo.
============================================================
Mark Shurtleff
email: gaijin(at)gaijinsrealm.com
irc alias: Gaijin -or- togashi_gaijin
fanfiction homepage: http://gaijinsrealm.com/fanfics.shtml
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