This might be an odd question from an English perspective, but it stems from Dutch being my first language. I have great difficulty distinguishing the following (mostly the first two);
町 / まち / village / “dorp”
村 / むら / town / between “dorp” and “stad”? Sometimes seems to be part of a city? Also used in villager (村人).
市 / し / city / “stad” → 市立 seems to be municipal / “gemeente”.
I’ve put them in order of size from what I could find, however they are greatly confusing me. Mostly the difference between village and town, however there seems to be overlap from 村 and 市 as well.
I suspect it stems from the fact that in the Netherlands we have/had something called “stadsrechten”, which was not necessarily due to size but more a wealth kind of thing (it had to be bought) and everything else is a “dorp”, no matter the size. “gemeente” is the “dorp”/“stad” and all the ground it has around it. Writing it down helped me a bit already to figure out why it is difficult for me, but it still stays vague.
As a fellow Dutchman, I never understood the difference either. The only remark I have on your city rights part, I don’t think cities need those to be called cities in Dutch anymore. Places that are called cities because of them (not due to size) are still called cities, but most of the times size itself is good enough to call a place a city.
And of course you have purist that are determined to call anything without city rights villages/towns .
Yea I think the city rights (stadsrechten) is an outdated, I suspect mostly that this system is the reason we use different words.
I forgot one distinction in my post, which is that I think Downtown / 下町 is “wijk” in Dutch, but I am also not 100% about this. Some are a “wijk” and insist on being called a “dorp” though because they were in the past, I’ve lived in one of those places.
I’d say “wijk” is more something in the trend of neighbourhood or district (kind of depending on whether or not you are talking about a place mostly for living or a place that has a different overall use).
Downtown means “binnenstad”, so basically the center of the place. The place where all the shops and cafes are f.e. The last place you talk about is called a “voorstad” in Dutch or that is at least what I learned how they are called. This is suburb in English.
It’s possible for a place to become a 市 and then lose its population but not its status… The smallest 市 in Japan, which is somewhere in Hokkaido, I forget, has like 2500 people. But generally speaking, 市s would be expected to have like 50,000 or more.
村 is usually up to 3,000-8,000ish people depending on the prefecture
町 is between 村 and 市, less than 50,000 people. Can also be a subsection of a 郡 (edit: 村 and 町 are always part of a 郡 as pointed out by Belthazar)
市 is more than 50,000 people
There are lots of exceptions like places which previously became 市 then their population declined as Leebo said, or there’s a 村 near me with over 30,000 people. Lots of municipal reorganisation happens which messes things up a bit. Just keep the overall structure in mind and that should help
Fun fact: the legal definition of what constitutes a 村 or 町 or 市 (and, for that matter, 都道府県 and the 特別区 of Tokyo) was established by the Local Autonomy Act (地方自治法) of 1947. There’s a couple of extra tiers above 市 too, specifically 中核市 (“core city”, population above 300,000) and 指定都市 (“designated city”, population above 500,000), though noone ever uses either of those in regular conversation unless it’s a conversation about the Local Autonomy Act of 1947 - they’re all just 市. 指定都市 are required to be subdivided into 区. There used to be another tier, 特例市 (“special city”, population above 200,000), but that was abolished in 2015.
In fact, all 郡 are subdivided into 町, and generally also 村. Every part of a prefecture that’s not in a 市 is in a 郡. Tokyo Prefecture aside, cos Tokyo’s weird.
(Often neighbourhoods within cities are also called 町 - for example 桜木町 in Yokohama - but these do not have the same legal meaning in Japanese, so don’t get them confused. This usage basically comes from former towns being engulfed by cities as they expanded.)
Very cool, thank you for sharing! I did not know there where tiers above city, even though it is not used in regular conversations I think it is useful to know.
Please correct me if wrong, writing this down to order my thoughts as well;
区 seems to be district (“wijk”), only used in cities 市 (and larger). I think 郡 seems to be close to a province, but does not have a ‘major’ city as we have in the Netherlands, but larger (while close to) a “gemeente”, so something in between. It also looks like that 町 stay 町, while being a different legal entity when integrated, instead of becoming a 区. Not sure what the distinction between 町 and 区 inside a 市 is though.
Edit; realised 桜木 is the name of the specific example Changed my text for that.
“Ward” is the usual English translation (though the Special Wards of Tokyo are rendered as “city” in official translations, for example 千代田区 is called “Chiyoda City” on their website and so forth - again, Tokyo is weird like that). I can’t really supply an equivalent Dutch term, I’m afraid.
群 is rendered as “district” usually. The “provinces” are 県, prefecture (as are the two 府, one 都 and one 道). 群 are not represented by any kind of legislative body; they’re simply subsections of 県.
Pre-Meiji Restoration, Japan was divided into provinces, named 国 in Japanese, and in general provinces were joined together to form prefectures. You can still see the old province names floating around, especially in the names of train stations - for example, the province that used to exist where Tokyo is now was named 武蔵, and this is reflected in train station names in the area like 武蔵小金井 and 武蔵小杉. And also the train companies 東武 and 西武, whose names mean “East Musashi” and “West Musashi” respectively. And the height of Tokyo Skytree, as 634 is a goroawase rendering of む-さ-し. But I digress.
Nah, they just get absorbed - the name is simply a holdover. The aforementioned 桜木町 is located entirely within Yokohama’s 中区.
Thank you for this additional explanation, I think there are no exact Dutch terms for this so it becomes more of a relation between the name of things This explanation cleared up a lot as well!
I think it is cool that some things are a leftover from how things came into being, it is also good to know that some terms are not legislative bodies, even though they are part of how things are divided.
村 is just “dorp”, or possibly even “gat”.
There is no distinction between town and city in Dutch.
I don’t think there are enough large Dutch cities to really encourage new words for further distinctions based on size, so there are no perfect one-to-one translations for 町 and 市.
I find the relative sizes fairly easy to remember: the less nature is represented in the kanji, the larger the settlement.
Not to be that guy, but I just remembered the word “gehucht”. This translate to hamlet in English and is a place of living smaller than a village or “dorp”. So that is an additional level XD. Took a quick look on wikipedia, but it seem Japanese does not have a direct translation besides ハムレット.
I definitely forgot both of these existed, “gat” is more street language though I think. I think I’ve only used that when referring to somewhere where there is nothing to do.
I am not 100% sure, but I suspect that 街 is a generic name for a place where people live, but would be great if someone can confirm that! Haven’t seen this Kanji before.
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Changed my text for that.
This explanation cleared up a lot as well!