Wide-area municipal administration continued to be more demanded for after the latter half of 1960's due to the changes of various social and economic conditions and the development of transportation and communication. But the policies such as additional national-wide and planned arrangements of municipalities were not implemented because "merger rush of the Showa era" based on such as Merger of Towns and Villages Promotion Law and New Municipalities Construction Promotion Law has come to the end of the first stage. As for municipal merger, Law for Exceptional Measures on Municipal Merger enforced on March 29 1965 provided certain exceptional measures in order for each municipality to smoothly realize the voluntary merger according to its characteristics. That is, the Law aimed not at positively promoting merger like previous laws related to municipal merger but at removing obstacles to merger.

This Law was 10-year time limit law, and provided the exceptional measures such as the term and number of local assembly members and agricultural committee members, the status of officers, the unequal imposition of local taxes, the recalculation of Local Allocation Tax, national treasury obligatory shares for the expenses of disaster recovery projects, and the electoral districts of prefecture assembly members and the House of Representatives. In addition, the previous laws related to municipal merger were absorbed into this Law. The validity of this Law has been extended by 10 years in 1975, 1985, and 1995 and as a result, the current time limit of this Law is on March 31 2005 as mentioned above.

The measures for managing the wide-area municipal administration basically have put more stress on policies of wide-area municipalities (these were expanded into the policies of wide-area administration thereafter) which aimed at the bloc administration by the systems for cooperatively carrying out affairs such as partial cooperatives and in addition by unification of these systems than on municipal mergers from the former half of 1970's to recently.

The main factors which changed the stressed measures from on area-wide administration in a narrow sense to on municipal merger were the amendment and extension of Law for Exceptional Measures on Municipal Merger in 1995, and the amendment of the Law in 1999 (due to Decentralization Package Law), and in addition, three Guidelines for promoting municipal merger provided by Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications after fiscal year 1999, the establishment of the Headquarter for Supporting Municipal Merger by national government, making Plan for Supporting Municipal Merger, and so on, which will be discussed in detail later. Here the fact that the argument of promoting municipal merger did not all diminished in from the latter half of 1970 to the latter half of 1980 is introduced below.

The Third Report related to administrative reform made by the Second Extraordinary Committee for Investigating Administration on July 30 1982 said related to the measures for managing municipal administration, "The first priority should be put on making the area of daily life an area of municipality so that it can provide public services as generally and uniformly as possible, and therefore municipal merger should be promoted from local metropolitan cities and the suburb municipalities which comparably have conditions for merger respecting for regional initiatives. But, in reality, it is necessary to manage extraordinarily and urgently by the systems of cooperatively carrying out affairs among municipalities for some time, and therefore these systems shall be improved and the conditions for municipal merger shall be developed". It could be said that this was an advanced view compared with the view proposed by promoters of the policies of wide-area municipalities started in 1969 that these policies neither aimed at municipal merger nor became the prerequisite conditions for it. But this view had a limit in that it chose the systems of cooperatively carrying out affairs as the actual solutions.

"Basic Direction of the Administrative and Fiscal Reform in Future" proposed by The First Extraordinary Council for Promoting Administrative Reform on June 10 1986 made more positive arguments, which indicated the clear direction of promoting municipal merger against the strong objections made by Nation-Wide Group of Towns and Villages, Nation-Wide Group of the Assembly Chairmen of Towns and Villages, and so on. That is, it proposed to "promote voluntary municipal merger in order to create energetic local governments with the bases enough to lead the new regional societies toward 21 century, coping with economic changes", pointing out that it was necessary for national government to develop the conditions for smoothly executing voluntary municipal merger and to make the systems of cooperation and support by each ministry and agency, not to mention that initiatives of related municipalities and residents should be respected for in the process of municipal merger. In addition, as for voluntary merger of small towns and villages, it proposed that it be desirable to organize the appropriate-scale municipalities in order to establish such as welfare offices and to soundly administer National Health Insurance, though it didn't clarify the goal and scale of municipal merger. It also proposed that policies of promoting voluntary municipal merger such as the extension of the period of recalculation of Local Allocation Tax, exceptional measures related to issuing local bonds, exceptional measures for the population requirement related to becoming city, and priority for grants-in aid projects given by each ministry and agency in addition to the exceptional measures based on Law for Exceptional Measures on Municipal Merger should be improved and strengthened in order to promote municipal merger. It is notable that these proposals, which were not realized in those days, have been realized recently through the amendment of the Law in 1995 and 1999.

　

As mentioned before, in the process of the amendment and extension of the Law for Exceptional Measures on Municipal Merger in 1995, the sentence "to promote voluntary municipal merger" was added to the purpose provisions of the Law, and in addition the related administrative and fiscal measures (such as the creation of the system of residents' initiatives to establish conference for municipal merger, the improvement of the contents of Municipality Construction Plan, the expansion of exceptional measures for the term and number of local assembly members, the extension of the period of recalculation of Local Allocation Tax, the introduction of merger modification to Local Allocation Tax, the creation of exceptional measures for issuing bonds for depopulation municipalities, and the clarification of the roles between national government and prefectures) were added to the Law, which indicated the beginning of the era of promoting municipal merger for 10 years thereafter.

The amendment of Law for Exceptional Measures on Municipal Merger in 1999 and the following actions taken by national government actually promoted these movements.

First of all, the amended Law for Exceptional Measures on Municipal Merger in 1999 expanded and improved the measures "to promote voluntary municipal merger" all the more such as the expansion and improvement of the systems of residents' initiatives, the establishment of the procedures for governors of prefectures to recommend the establishment of conference for municipal merger, the extension of the period of recalculation of Local Allocation Tax, the creation of exceptional bonds for municipal merger, the creation of regional council, the creation of the exceptional measures for benefit pension plan for local assembly members, and the creation of the exceptional measures for the requirements for becoming city.

Then, as for the requirements for becoming city such as the population of over 50,000, the exceptional measure to become city with the population of over 40,000 was taken in December 1998, and the measure to become city with over 30,000 was taken in December 2000 by the law initiated by Representatives, which make it possible to become city through municipal merger with the population of over 30,000 (the other requirements for becoming city such as the number of households in urban districts, and the number of population who work in commerce and industry are not required) by the end of March 2004, and with the population of over 40,000 (the other requirements for becoming city are required)by the end of March 2005.

The actions taken by national government after the amendment in 1999 is overviewed as follows; first of all, Ministry of Home Affairs asked each prefecture to follow "The Guideline for Promoting Municipal Merger" (called as "The First Guideline" subsequently), which mainly asked it to make "the Outline for Promoting Municipal Merger" (called as "Outline" subsequently). Based on this, all prefectures have made their Outlines by the end of April 2001.

Next the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications proposed "The Future Actions based on the Outline for Promoting Municipal Merger (Guideline)" (called as "The Second Guideline" subsequently), which argued about the actions taken by prefectures and municipalities after the Outline was made, to each prefecture. The main points of The Second Guideline were that the support system by all offices which was managed by governors of prefectures (headquarters for supporting municipal merger administered by prefectures) should be established in prefectures as early as possible during 2001, and at least several number of the stressed support districts for municipal merger should be determined.

Then based on "The Immediate Principles for Supporting Municipal Merger" decided in the fourth meeting of Headquarter for Supporting Municipal Merger administered by national government on February 21 2002, "The Future Actions based on the Progress of Conference on Municipal Merger (Guideline)" (called as "The Third Guideline" subsequently) was proposed to each prefecture in March 2002. The Third Guideline treated the year 2002 as "the crucial year", asking each prefecture to determine as many stressed support districts for municipal merger within its whole area early during the fiscal year 2002 as possible, and asking these districts to establish legal conference for municipal merger early by the end of the fiscal year 2002. In addition, the letter written by the Minister of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications, Katayama which said that he expected all mayors and assembly chairmen of municipalities to argue well about municipal merger with residents early was sent to them.

As a result, headquarters for supporting municipal merger administered by prefectures were established in all prefectures by the end of July 2002, and 204 districts which got stressed supports for municipal merger (including 900 municipalities) were determined as of December 4, 2002, and 149 legal conferences for municipal merger (including 597 related municipalities) were established as of the same date. If voluntary conferences and studying groups were added to those legal conferences, the total number was 667 (including 2,647 municipalities) as of October 1 2002, which occupied 82.3 percent of total number of municipalities (3,218).

As for various supporting measures for promoting municipal merger, the system of national subsidies for promoting municipal merger has been revived since fiscal year 2000 in about 45 years after the merger rush of the Showa era in addition to recalculation of Local Allocation Tax and measures for exceptional bonds for municipal merger based on Law for Exceptional Measures on Municipal Merger, and local finance measures such as Special Local Allocation Tax for adjusting differences in city planning and utilities as financial measures.

As for the actions taken by whole national government, the idea of promoting voluntary municipal merger was clearly written in Administrative Reform Scheme approved by Cabinet on December 1, 2000 according to the policy of the ruling parties that the goal of the number of municipalities should be 1,000 after municipal merger. And the final report proposed by Decentralization Promotion Committee on June 14 2001 said "municipalities, which play a major role in administration in the age of decentralization, are continuously and strongly expected to make effort to develop appropriate administrative systems for managing the new era through promoting voluntary municipal merger".

"Basic Policies for Macroeconomic Management and Structural Reform of the Japanese Economy" proposed by Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy which made so-called "Key Policies" under Koizumi Cabinet and approved by the Cabinet on June 26 2001 said " municipal merger and wide-area administration shall be more strongly promoted and then municipal reorganization shall be promptly promoted in order to develop "independent local governments". And "Basic Policies for Economic and Fiscal Policy Management and Structural Reform 2002" approved by Cabinet on June 25 2002 said "the reinforcement of the administrative and fiscal bases of local governments which take in charge of the reform is so essential that the positive actions for municipal merger shall be promoted".

In order to develop these concrete support systems, Headquarter for Supporting Municipal Merger whose manager was Minister of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications and whose member was each Vice Minister was established in national government by the approval of Cabinet on March 27 2001. The Headquarter made Supporting Plans for Municipal Merger on August 30 2001, which provided, in addition to existent local administrative and financial supporting measures, the measures for the expansion and improvement of these measures and supporting measures given through the cooperation of related ministries and agencies to the municipalities which were determined as stressed support districts for municipal merger and the merged municipalities by the end of March 2005. The comprehensive contents of the new supporting measures given through the cooperation of related ministries and agencies (discussed in detail later) are (1)the development of social infrastructures which support comfortable life (development of roads, public transportations, urban areas, housing environment, and parks and wooded areas) (2)the creation of rich living environment (promotion of the measures for waste treatment, development of water ands sewerage systems, promotion of fire protection, disaster prevention, and land protection, and development of informational communication), (3)the improvement of health, medical treatment, and welfare (management of Nursing Care Insurance, promotion of the stable management of National Health Insurance, and promotion of participation in society by elders), (4)the improvement of education for the next generation, (5)the promotion of industries adapted to new century (promotion of agriculture, forestry, fisheries, commerce, and industry), and (6)the wide-area city planning through cooperation and interaction. And more expansion and improvement of these supporting plans has been examined recently.

It could be said that publicity and enlightenment played a major role in promoting municipal merger in today's promotion of municipal merger as well as in the Merger Rush of Showa Era. Relay symposiums have been held in all 47 prefectures in fiscal year 2000, 2001, and 2002. And in addition, positive actions for publicity and enlightenment have been taken through various pubic media such as advertisements in newspapers and magazines, television and radio programs, periodicals, websites and pamphlets of each ministry and agency.