Misplaced Pages

#20979

24-475: Iwaizumi ( 岩泉町 , Iwaizumi-chō ) is a town located in Iwate Prefecture , Japan . As of 29 February 2024, the town had a population of 8,006, and a population density of 8.1 persons per km² in 4123 households. The total area of the town is 992.36 square kilometres (383.15 sq mi). The area of present-day Iwaizumi was part of the ancient Mutsu Province , which was dominated by

48-583: 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

72-588: 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

96-669: 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

120-570: 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

144-448: A town is contained within a district . The same word (町; machi or chō ) is also used in names of smaller regions, usually a part of a ward in a city. This is a legacy of when smaller towns were formed on the outskirts of a city, only to eventually merge into it. Districts of Japan Historically, districts have at times functioned as an administrative unit . From 1878 to 1921 district governments were roughly equivalent to

168-463: 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

192-527: Is 1283 mm with September as the wettest month and February as the driest month. The temperatures are highest on average in August, at around 22.3 °C, and lowest in January, at around −2.0 °C. Per Japanese census data, the population of Iwaizumi peaked in around the year 1960 and has declined steadily over the past 60 years, and is now less than half of what it was in the year 1970, and less than it

216-557: The Diet of Japan . The local economy is based on agriculture and to a lesser extent on commercial fishing . Iwaizumi has five public elementary schools and three public junior high schools operated by the town government, and one public high school operated by the Iwate Prefectural Board of Education. Sanriku Railway – Kita-Rias Line The JR East Iwaizumi Line , which connected Iwaizumi with Moichi Station on

240-726: The Nambu clan during the Edo period , who ruled Morioka Domain under the Tokugawa shogunate . With the Meiji period establishment of the modern municipalities system, the village of Iwaizumi was created within Kitahei District on April 1, 1889. Kitahei, Nakahei and Higashihei Districts were all merged into Minamihei District on March 29, 1896. Iwaizumi was elevated to town status on August 1, 1922. On September 30, 1956, Imaizumi annexed

264-581: The Yamada Line suspended operations on 31 July 2010, due to a landslide. The line was officially closed on April 1, 2014, owing to low public demand. [REDACTED] Media related to Iwaizumi, Iwate at Wikimedia Commons Towns of Japan A town (町; chō or machi ) is a local administrative unit in Japan . It is a local public body along with prefecture ( ken or other equivalents) , city ( shi ) , and village ( mura ) . Geographically,

SECTION 10

#1732791947021

288-685: 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

312-463: 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

336-547: 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

360-559: 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

384-488: 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

408-562: 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

432-655: 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

456-542: 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

480-503: The neighboring villages of Akka, Ugei, Okawa and Omoto and on April 1, 1957, annexed the village of Kogawa to reach is present borders. In August 2016, Typhoon Lionrock hit the town with strong winds and heavy rain that caused landslides and flooding. 19 people died, including 9 people who drowned in a nursing home after a river burst its banks. Iwaizumi is in the Kitakami Mountains of northeast Iwate prefecture, east of

504-433: 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,

SECTION 20

#1732791947021

528-579: The prefectural capital of Morioka. It has a small coastline on the Pacific Ocean to the east. The area has numerous limestone caves , including the Ryūsendō . Iwate Prefecture Iwaizumi has a humid climate ( Köppen climate classification Cfa ) characterized by mild summers and cold winters with heavy snowfall. The average annual temperature in Iwaizumi is 9.5 °C. The average annual rainfall

552-414: 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 ),

576-483: Was a century ago. Iwaizumi has a mayor-council form of government with a directly elected mayor and a unicameral village council of 10 members. Iwaizumi, together with the city of Miyako and the villages of Fudai, Tanohata and Yamada, collectively contributes three seats to the Iwate Prefectural legislature. In terms of national politics, the village is part of Iwate 2nd district of the lower house of

#20979