Municipal areas have taken over the areas as of the enforcement of Local Autonomy Law on May 5,1947 according to Article 5 Section 1 of the Law, which says "the areas of general local governments shall take over the current areas" unless the procedures of disestablishment, establishment, division, merger, and changing boundary of local governments are taken based on Article 7 Section 1. Thus the idea that the areas of local governments are not newly decided under new law but take over the areas based on previous law has been applied not only to Law for the System of City, Town, and Village which was the previous law to Local Autonomy Law, but also to Law for the Arrangement of County, Ward, Town, and Village in 1878. Therefore it could be said that the areas of towns and villages have ultimately roots in the Shogun /Clan system.

But in reality, the municipal areas have been merged and expanded frequently according to the quantitative and qualitative changes of affairs managed by municipalities in the history of municipal areas. As a result, the number of municipalities has changed from about 70,000 in 1888 to 3,218 in July 2002.

In this chapter, first the history of municipal merger mainly such as merger rush of the Meiji era and in Showa era will be overviewed, and then the today's meaning of municipal merger which has been actively argued everywhere again will be examined, and finally various exceptional measures and support measures currently implemented for municipal merger by the end of March 2005 based on Law for Exceptional Measures on Municipal Merger will be introduced.

　

The towns and villages in the early Meiji era, which were decided according to the native villages in Edo era, were so small in scale that at first Meiji government established wards (distinguished between big wards and small wards thereafter), which were the bigger units than the area of towns and villages, as the units of family registration regardless of the area of towns and villages when Family Registration Law was enacted in 1871. As a result, towns and villages temporarily lost their positions as the units of local administration. But then, their positions revived due to “Law for the Arrangement of County, Ward, Town, and Village” in 1878 by which the chiefs of ward were placed in wards and the chiefs of houses were placed in towns and villages, which enabled them to have both the position of administrators of wards, towns and villages and the position of persons taking in charge of national affairs related to local administrations (such as family registration). The number of towns and villages was over 70,000 in around 1880, but on the other hand, after housing offices began to be placed by 5 towns and villages on average from 1884, the number of the housing offices, which were actually the units of local administrations, changed from little less than 30,000 in 1883 through 13,981 in 1884 to 11,374 in 1888. This fact indicates that the basic unit of local administration was indirectly made expand before so-called the merger rush of Meiji era. That is, the difference between the scale of the districts of the housing offices, which had the necessary scale as the basic unit of local administrations, and the scale of towns and villages have become bigger.

"Law for the System of City, Town, and Village" was proclaimed on April 17, 1888, and enforced to prefectures with their governors' applications, to cities appointed by Minister of Home Affairs, and to towns and villages under the supervision of the Minister considering the local situations from April 1, 1889. But since a little less than 70 percent of total towns and villages had less than 100 houses in those days, rationalization of the scale of towns and villages was the urgent issue in order to enforce the new system smoothly. Minister of Home Affairs at that time, Aritomo Yamagata argued that municipal merger had to be carried out in order to enforce the new system of towns and villages, recognizing the fact that it was difficult for towns and villages to develop their local autonomy after municipal merger (like making several houses one).

"The Standard for Merger of Towns and Villages" was proposed from Minister of Home Affairs to directors in each local government as the Order352 of Minister of Home Affairs on June 13, 1888. According to this Order, the towns and villages which had area and money enough to achieve independent autonomy didn't have to merge, but on the other hand, the other towns and villages had to merge based on the standards as follows: The number of houses between 300 and 500 houses was considered as the standard number of houses, and the area controlled by chiefs of housing offices which had no problems related to landform and residents' feeling could be merged. In addition care had to be taken that the merged area should not be too broad and should not disturb traffic. If the area couldn't merge due to landform and residents' feeling, cooperatives of towns and villages could be established based on Article 116 Section 2 of Law for the System of City, Town, and Village, but it should be treated and managed as one town or village as much as possible.

Thus, as the result of the nation-wide promotion of the merger of towns and villages, the number of towns and villages decreased from 71,314 at the end of 1888 to 15,820 at the end of 1889, which was about one-fifth of the number at the end of 1888. It is true that the number was considerably different from the number of housing offices (1 1,374 in 1888), but it is understandable that the expansion of the scale of the area controlled by chiefs of housing offices implemented after 1884 was one of the factors which led to the success in the large- scale merger of towns and villages in 1889.

It could be said that the bases for municipalities in Japan to realize the modern local autonomous administration were ready as the result of the success in this large-scale merger of towns and villages. Municipalities in those days only managed affairs such as family registration, draft, compulsory education, and in addition limitedly managed public works and promoting industries. But merger rush of the Meiji era provided basic conditions that municipalities coped with various regional administrative issues occurred in the process of the development of capitalism thereafter, and in fact the content of municipal affairs was improved and strengthened after 1897.

Due to the merger rush of the Meiji era, the number of towns and villages decreased steadily as a whole though there were temporary reactions against that in a way to split towns and villages in some local areas such as Tohoku and Hokushin regions. In particular, the existent three-layer system (prefecture, county and municipality) of local governments has changed into two-layer system (prefecture and municipality) according to "Law for Disestablishment of County System" (Law63, 1921) enforced on April 1, 1923, which promoted the autonomy of towns and villages and strengthened their powers more, and provided motive power to the movement of merger of towns and villages more. The merger executed as a commemoration of the Japanese era 2600 in 1940 was also notable from the viewpoint of the number of municipalities merged.

On the other hand, the merger of towns and villages executed after merger rush of the Meiji era had the characteristics that it focused more on the expansion of city area and enforcement of city system compared with merger rush of the Meiji era which focused more on improvement of the ability of towns and villages through the merger of towns and villages.

It is said that there were mergers half-forcibly executed due to the military aims and so on in the former half of 1940's. But after World War Second, the provision of procedures that the merged area should return back to the previous municipal area through initiatives and referenda was provided by the Supplementary Provision 2 of "Law for the Amendment of the Part of Local Autonomy Law" (Lawl79, 1948).

After World War Second, local autonomy has been improved as one of the methods for Japanese democratization in a way to enact Local Autonomy Law and to delegate national powers over such as police, education, social welfare, and health and hygiene to local governments.

Shoup Tax Mission visited Japan in April 1949 and recommended not only the endowment of independent financial source to local governments, the arrangement of national subsidies and the establishment of Equalization Grant, but also the establishment of the committee which should examine the redistribution of the three kinds of affairs of national government, prefectures, and municipalities based on the three principles which were (1) the principle of clarifying the administrative responsibility, (2) the principle of efficiency, and (3) the principle of giving priority to local autonomy, especially to municipalities related to the issues of distribution of affairs closely related to the issues of the reform of local tax and financial sources.

According to these recommendations, Committee for Investigating Local Administration (Kobe Committee) was established, and recommendations about distribution of affairs between prefectures and municipalities were made in December 1949. According to these recommendations, rationalization of the scale of municipalities was one of the issues in redistributing administrative affairs, and since especially municipalities had a priority related to redistribution of affairs, the scale of municipalities should be rationalized based on the "standard for the present" related to the scale of municipalities, that is, a population of about 7,000 or 8,000. The scale of a population of about 7,000 or 8,000 was not determined based on the all administrations of towns and villages, but on the scale of towns and villages as administrators of compulsory education, mainly assuming the practice of the education systems which included 6 years elementary school system and 3 years newly established middle school system.

According to these recommendations, national government made a recommendation system (Article8-2 of Local Autonomy Law) made by governors of prefectures about the appropriation of the scale of municipalities through the amendment of the part of the Law in 1952, which enabled the governors to participate in the voluntary municipal merger to a certain extent, and provided one of the prerequisite conditions for the enactment of Merger of Towns and Villages Promotion Law and the promotion of nation-wide merger of towns and villages based on the Law thereafter.