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25-523: Matsura Takanobu, who rose to power among the Matsura clan, a powerful local clan in the northern part of present-day Nagasaki Prefecture, conquered Kitamatsuura District in northern Hizen Province and the island province of Iki . In 1587, his son, Matsura Shigenobu was confirmed in his holdings for assisting Toyotomi Hideyoshi 's Kyushu Conquest of 1587-1587. During the Japanese invasions of Korea , Hirado

50-576: A county of the United States, ranking below prefecture and above town or village , on the same level as a city . District governments were entirely abolished by 1926. The bureaucratic administration of Japan is divided into three basic levels: national, prefectural, and municipal. Below the national government there are 47 prefectures, six of which are further subdivided into subprefectures to better service large geographical areas or remote islands. The municipalities (cities, towns and villages) are

75-432: A district ( 郡 , gun ) is composed of one or more rural municipalities ( towns or villages ) within a prefecture . Districts have no governing function, and are only used for geographic or statistical purposes such as mailing addresses. Cities are not part of districts. Historically, districts have at times functioned as an administrative unit . From 1878 to 1921 district governments were roughly equivalent to

100-588: A compact territory in the surrounding area, but beyond that sometimes a string of disconnected exclaves and enclaves, in some cases distributed over several districts in several provinces. For this reason alone, they were impractical as geographical units, and in addition, Edo period feudalism was tied to the nominal income of a territory, not the territory itself, so the shogunate could and did redistribute territories between domains, their borders were generally subject to change, even if in some places holdings remained unchanged for centuries. Provinces and districts remained

125-663: A few years later. As of today, towns and villages also belong directly to prefectures ; the districts no longer possess any administrations or assemblies since the 1920s, and therefore also no administrative authority – although there was a brief de facto reactivation of the districts during the Pacific War in the form of prefectural branch offices (called chihō jimusho , 地方事務所, "local offices/bureaus") which generally had one district in their jurisdiction. However, for geographical and statistical purposes, districts continue to be used and are updated for municipal mergers or status changes: if

150-567: A hierarchy of feudal holdings. In the Edo period, the primary subdivisions were the shogunate cities, governed by urban administrators ( machi-bugyō ) , the shogunate domain ( bakuryō , usually meant to include the smaller holdings of Hatamoto, etc.), major holdings ( han /domains ), and there was also a number of minor territories such as spiritual (shrine/temple) holdings; while the shogunate domain comprised vast, contiguous territories, domains consisted of generally only one castle and castle town, usually

175-463: A town or village (countrywide: >15,000 in 1889, <1,000 today) is merged into or promoted to a [by definition: district-independent] city (countrywide: 39 in 1889, 791 in 2017), the territory is no longer counted as part of the district. In this way, many districts have become extinct, and many of those that still exist contain only a handful of or often only one remaining municipality as many of today's towns and villages are also much larger than in

200-521: Is a district located in Nagasaki Prefecture , Japan . As of August 1, 2011, the district has an estimated population of 16,270 and a density of 282 persons per km . The total area is 57.76 km . 33°13′55″N 129°39′36″E  /  33.232°N 129.66°E  / 33.232; 129.66 This Nagasaki Prefecture location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Districts of Japan In Japan,

225-628: The Tokugawa shogunate with a kokudaka of 63,000 koku . Under the 4th daimyō , also named Matsura Shinobu (but with different kanji ) the domain was reduced by 1500 koku through a grant to his cousin Matsura Nobutada. During Shigenobu's tenure, in 1641, the Hirado Dutch Trading Post was relocated by order of the shogunate from Hirado to Dejima , which caused a great blow to the domain's finances. After that, in order to restore

250-412: The han system , Hirado Domain consisted of several discontinuous territories calculated to provide the assigned kokudaka , based on periodic cadastral surveys and projected agricultural yields. The territories below includes the territory of Hirado Shinden Domain which was merged back into Hirado Domain in 1870. Kitamatsuura District, Nagasaki Kitamatsuura ( 北松浦郡 , Kitamatsuura-gun )

275-569: The Ōuetsu Reppan Dōmei in northern Japan, at Morioka and Akita . Following the Meiji restoration , in 1871 Hirado Domain became "Hirado Prefecture", which was later incorporated into Nagasaki Prefecture. In April 1884, Matsura Akira was made a count in the new kazoku peerage system. From 1890, he served in the House of Peers of the Diet of Japan . He was later awarded 2nd Court rank. As with most domains in

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300-675: The Chinese division ). Under the Taihō Code, the administrative unit of province ( 国 , kuni ) was above district, and the village ( 里 or 郷 sato ) was below. As the power of the central government decayed (and in some periods revived) over the centuries, the provinces and districts, although never formally abolished and still connected to administrative positions handed out by the Imperial court (or whoever controlled it), largely lost their relevance as administrative units and were superseded by

325-463: The Edo period "three capitals" Edo/Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka comprised several urban districts. (This refers only to the city areas which were not organized as a single administrative unit before 1889, not the prefectures Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka which had initially been created in 1868 as successor to the shogunate city administrations, but were soon expanded to surrounding shogunate rural domain and feudal holdings and by 1878 also contained rural districts and in

350-488: The Meiji era. The districts are used primarily in the Japanese addressing system and to identify the relevant geographical areas and collections of nearby towns and villages. Because district names had been unique within a single province and as of 2008 prefecture boundaries are roughly aligned to provincial boundaries, most district names are unique within their prefectures. Hokkaidō Prefecture , however, came much later to

375-550: The case of Osaka, one other urban district/city from 1881.) District administrations were set up in 1878, but district assemblies were only created in 1890 with the introduction of the district code (gunsei) as part of the Prussian-influenced local government reforms of 1888–90. From the 1890s, district governments were run by a collective executive council ( gun-sanjikai , 郡参事会), headed by the appointed district chief ( gunchō ) and consisting of 3 additional members elected by

400-484: The district assembly and one appointed by the prefectural governor – similar to cities ( shi-sanjikai , headed by the mayor) and prefectures ( fu-/ken-sanjikai , headed by the governor). In 1921, Hara Takashi , the first non-oligarchic prime minister (although actually from a Morioka domain samurai family himself, but in a career as commoner-politician in the House of Representatives), managed to get his long-sought abolition of

425-550: The districts passed – unlike the municipal and prefectural assemblies which had been an early platform for the Freedom and People's Rights Movement before the Imperial Diet was established and became bases of party power, the district governments were considered to be a stronghold of anti-liberal Yamagata Aritomo 's followers and the centralist-bureaucratic Home Ministry tradition. The district assemblies and governments were abolished

450-428: The domain's internal affairs, a land survey was carried out, and the foundation of the domain's finances was solidified by promoting the development of agriculture, fishing, and commerce. The 5th daimyō , Matsura Takashi reduced the domain by 10,000 koku to establish his younger brother, Masashi as head of a cadet branch of the clan and daimyō of Hirado-Shinden Domain . Although a tozama daimyō Matsura Takashi

475-638: The lowest level of government; the twenty most-populated cities outside Tokyo Metropolis are known as designated cities and are subdivided into wards. The district was initially called kōri and has ancient roots in Japan. Although the Nihon Shoki says they were established during the Taika Reforms , kōri was originally written 評 . It was not until the Taihō Code that kōri came to be written as 郡 (imitating

500-542: The most important geographical frame of reference throughout the middle and early modern ages up to the restoration and beyond – initially, the prefectures were created in direct succession to the shogunate era feudal divisions and their borders kept shifting through mergers, splits and territorial transfers until they reached largely their present state in the 1890s. Cities (-shi) , since their introduction in 1889, have always belonged directly to prefectures and are independent from districts. Before 1878, districts had subdivided

525-433: The precursors to the 1889 shi . Geographically, the rural districts were mainly based on the ancient districts, but in many places they were merged, split up or renamed, in some areas, prefectural borders went through ancient districts and the districts were reorganized to match; urban districts were completely separated from the rural districts, most of them covered one city at large, but the largest and most important cities,

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550-414: The whole country with only few exceptions (Edo/Tokyo as shogunate capital and some island groups). In 1878, the districts were reactivated as administrative units, but the major cities were separated from the districts. All prefectures (at that time only -fu and -ken ) were – except for some remote islands – contiguously subdivided into [rural] districts/counties ( -gun ) and urban districts/cites ( -ku ),

575-487: Was a forward base of operations for Japanese forces. In 1599, Matsura Shigenobu erected a castle called Hinotake-jō on the site of the present-day Hirado Castle. However, he burned the castle down himself in 1613, as a gesture of loyalty towards Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu , having served in the losing Toyotomi side during the Battle of Sekigahara . In return, he was allowed to retain his position as daimyō of Hirado Domain under

600-480: Was promoted to the positions of sōshaban and Jisha-bugyō within the shogunal administration. However, the expenses incurred in this and the reconstruction of Hirado Castle in 1707 led to the domain's finances becoming impoverished. The 9th daimyō , Matsura Kiyoshi, was a noted essayist and political commentator. He carried out major reforms in the domain in line with the Kansei Reforms . His daughter, Aiko,

625-682: Was the grandmother of Emperor Meiji . During the Bakumatsu period , the 12th daimyō , Matsura Akira commanded his forces as part of the Satchō Alliance during the Boshin War of the Meiji Restoration , in support of Emperor Meiji . Military reforms led to the formation of a Western-style rifle unit in the domain, which fought at the Battle of Toba–Fushimi and against the Tokugawa remnants of

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