Talk:Special cities of Japan

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Cities

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tochigi[edit]

I find it strange that not a single city in Tochigi seems to have this designation. Either this is an oversight or the guidelines for qualification as a "special city" need to be more detailed. Utsunomiya, the city I live in, and capital of Tochigi has about half a million people and so should be qualified but isn't mentioned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.200.20.77 (talk) 14:03, 20 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Removed Nerima paragraph[edit]

I removed the sentence about Nerima calling itself the 23rd special city, because it seems to just be a translation error. In the PDF file that was linked, the Japanese text correctly states:

昭和22年8月1日、23番目の特別区として練馬区が誕生しました。

(emphasis added by me). Neier (talk) 11:53, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Responsibilities[edit]

This article is funny, because it doesn't explain what makes these cities special? What are their responsibilities and functions that a regular city/municipality doesn't have? What differentiates these from regular cities? --Criticalthinker (talk) 08:08, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I remember, the additional (elsewhere prefectural) rights of a special city mainly relate to city planning, e.g. the authority to designate areas for certain types of construction. A more detailed list is included in the Japanese article (ja:特例市#移譲される事務), apparently the status also grants additional responsibilities related to environmental protection: noise regulation, water quality protection. Someone, preferably with sufficient grasp of the legal matter involved, could insert a detailed list from a Japanese source (should be easily be found online; e.g. MIC: 中核市・特例市) or from an English source (might require a little library research). --Asakura Akira (talk) 15:22, 23 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tokubetsu-shi[edit]

Shouldn't the article include at least a disambiguating mention of the concept of special cities (not 特例市, but 特別市, tokubetsu-shi)? They were more recently debated in Japan as a possible alternative to the Metropolis concept and may come up again in discussions about the Dōshūsei. The status was originally even included in the Local Autonomy Law during the occupation (cf. ja:特別市#日本) and back then seemed to be the realization of the autonomy dreams for the five remaining of the six prewar major cities of the Empire. Where the Metropolis concept eliminates any independent, single city government and gives the prefectural government some otherwise municipal authority in the area of the dissolved city (or possibly several dissolved cities in the upcoming Osaka "Metropolis"), a special (tokubetsu) city would instead be separated from the prefecture and given prefectural authority itself. In a nutshell: a prefectural-level city, similar to the province-level 特別市 (Teukbyeol-si/T'ŭkpyŏlsi) in Rep. & DPR Korea – cf. Special cities of South Korea, Special cities of North Korea.
I have no idea how tokurei- and tokubetsu-shi are generally disambiguated in English translations; one example that I could quickly find and includes both (Ohsugi, Satoru: The Large City System of Japan, p. 1, Diagram 1) uses "special case cites" for the tokurei-shi and "special cities" for the tokubetsu-shi. --Asakura Akira (talk) 15:22, 23 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Special city requirement re-modification[edit]

I was just wondering. Shouldn't the Japanese government plan to re-modify the special cities' requirements? Like for example, the population from 200,000 to at least a minimum of 100,000 or 150,000. And the area should be either limit-less or a minimum of 50 km² (comparing to the core cities' requirements of a minimum of 100 km²). Lemme know your thoughts. jlog3000 (talk) 15:36, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]