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Lsmithgo 23:58, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Hi Lsmithgo,
You raise a good point. The term really is unfamiliar in English. It is, however, an important distinction, and one that's made in Japanese.
Many cities in Japan have subdivisions called ku, which we translate as "ward." (Pardon me if you know this already; perhaps some later readers will benefit from the information.) The old Tokyo City had such divisions until it was abolished during World War II. Later, Tokyo City was never formed again, and to this day, there is no such city. Rather, the former wards have (after various mergers and other restructuring) developed into entities that are just like cities in nearly every respect. These are now officially called tokubetsuku (in Japanese, 特別区). Since tokubetsu means "special," we translate this as "special wards."
This gives rise to a number of difficulties. First, even though their official name is tokubetsuku, people commonly refer to them as simply ku. This goes beyond conversation, as many forms with spaces for addresses ask people to fill in their shi-cho-son-ku, rather than tokubetsuku, even though the ku here applies only to tokubetsuku. Second, nearly all of the special wards call themselves "city" in English, as a look at their English Web sites reveals. So both in Japanese and in English, people use alternatives to "special ward."
What should we do in English? We have various alternatives. I wouldn't mind calling them "cities," and that might give rise to less confusion than the present term does. I chose to call them "special wards" (as you pointed out above), but I'm not at all convinced that it's the best solution. "City" invites one type of confusion; "ward," another. "Special ward" is the exact term, but it's awkward and perhaps misleading in its own way.
As for capitalization, it's a possibility in places such as the one you mentioned. I'm not sure whether I would have capitalized "cities" if I had written "the cities of Chiyoda, ..." in the example.
What would you suggest?
Fg2 07:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
I think your explanation is great. Just in English and Japanese, I have always heard them referred to as "23 wards" so personally I would drop the word "special" except when part of the "special" explanation (if you see what I mean...)
Lsmithgo 18:39, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Should be changed to "borough".
Tangmo2 05:27, 2 Novermber 2007 (UTC)
---Borough is reasonable I guess, but because ward is already well established for reference to Japan's districting I don't think this point is worth pursuing. As for capitalization, I've always been taught to capitalize when it's one body (Shibuya City) but not when it's a series (Tottori, Fukui, and Niigata prefectures). Gunbei ( talk) 19:50, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
You know the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. Are the wards a similar deal? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Craigboy ( talk • contribs) 04:56, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Outside of the fact that the Japanese insist on translating "ku" in the Tokyo case to "city", as in Nerima City or Minato City, instead of as "ward", is there a reason that we list all of these as, for example, Kita, Tokyo, when other North Wards in Japan are called Kita-ku, Hamamatsu, Kita-ku, Kobe, Kita-ku, Kyoto, etc.? I have never heard anyone in normal conversation refer to any of these places without the word "Ward" or "-ku"; I certainly have never heard anyone use "City" in this context in normal conversation. In Japanese, of course, this is always phrased as 「~区」 and not as 「~市」; after all, it's a ward, not a city. So... LordAmeth ( talk) 04:34, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
The article calls the structure "unique to Tokyo" but doesn't distinguish them from, say, the boroughs of New York City. What's the key difference? -- Damian Yerrick ( talk | stalk) 14:29, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
Most of the descriptions of various areas seem to make sense, but I'm curious about Odaiba; the description says: "A large, reclaimed, waterfront area that has become one of Tokyo's most popular shopping and entertainment districts."
Odaiba is indeed a reclaimed waterfront area, and certainly has shopping and entertainment, but is it really one of Tokyo's "most popular" districts for such? Tokyo has a lot of very popular shopping/entertainment areas, and Odaiba's always seemed pretty blah. Are there numbers to support that claim...?
-- Snogglethorpe ( talk) 04:43, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
Special wards will probably not remain unique to Tokyo in the long term – once Osaka City & Sakai City disintegrate into special wards of Osaka this article needs to be rewritten or split up (I think under the envisioned timetable, the final hurdle, the referendum to abolish Osaka City [+ other affected municipalities] is to be held in 2014, with the actual abolition of Osaka City to take place in 2015
[1] – unless Hashimoto stumbles and not everything goes as smoothly as it has until now...). I do not want to impose whether this article should cover special wards (tokubetsu-ku) in general, as the introduction suggests, or only those of Tokyo, as the title suggests. And there is still time to discuss the future article structure in general as other articles will have to be reorganized as well (if you want to keep the
Special wards of Tokyo/
Tokyo City/
Tokyo pattern: merge
Osaka &
Sakai into
Special wards of Osaka, new articles
Osaka City and
Sakai City about administrative history, move
Osaka Prefecture to
Osaka).
So, I put this up here on the talk page for discussion: I propose to remove the phrase "and is unique to Tokyo" from the introduction and insert a section at the end along the lines of:
== Special wards of other prefectures ==
Distribution of administrative responsibilities |
Current "Tokyo Metropolis" | Current Osaka Prefecture | Hashimoto's argument for an Osaka "Metropolis" | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
↑ Wider area services | "Tokyo Metropolis" | Osaka Prefecture | Osaka "Metropolis" | |||
Osaka City [and Sakai City] ( Designated cities) |
||||||
Special wards | Other municipalities | |||||
Other municipalities | Other municipalities | |||||
Special wards | ||||||
↓ Local services |
Wards (not municipalities, no elected councils or mayors) |
I included the table from Hashimoto's TV appearance (Segment on YouTube: 橋下知事∇1「大阪都構想を解説、選挙でリーダー選ぶ区長公選制) because I think it may be illustrative to many readers, but maybe others disagree. (I'm not sure whether even today all citizens of Osaka have fully realized what the Osaka Metropolis plan is about. But it is probably a matter of political point of view (and depends on the implementation) whether you follow Hashimoto's argument that municipal governments will actually have more power than elsewhere in an Osaka "Metropolis".) Welcomes any feedback: Asakura Akira ( talk) 20:16, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Fast forward to 2017 and Hashimoto has stumbled in several ways, even if he and his followers & successors, I think, have not yet given up fully on the "Metropolis plan" although they face the usual dilemma: How soon after a failed referendum can you hold another one on the same/a very similar question? In any case, for the time being, there is no need to reorganize all Osaka-related articles and categories.
But, wouldn't it still be helpful to split this article into two as in the Japanese Wikipedia?
This is only a suggestion because possibly, it might make the subject easer to understand if one separates the legal status of a special ward entirely from the geographical stuff related specifically to the dense urban East of Tokyo/ex-Tokyo city (or what some other language versions of Wikipedia define simply as Tokyo [if no longer as an adminstrative unit in many other ways still: city] as opposed to Tokyo (prefecture/"Metropolis"/-fu/-to); but the question of whether the [ex-]city or the whole prefecture/"Metropolis" gets the preference for the plain article title Tokyo is not the issue here.). But I have no firm opinion on this, and am no English native speaker. So, others should discuss and decide. Asakura Akira ( talk) 14:58, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
"in everyday English only Tokyo as a whole would be referred to as a city."
There is no citation for this and it makes no sense. I don't know a single English-speaking Japanese resident who refers to Tokyo as a city. Every single person I know refers to Tokyo as a Prefecture, because that's what it is. And they refer to the 23-ku as either "the twenty-three ku", or as "East Tokyo" (contrasted with West Tokyo, which is everywhere in mainland Tokyo Prefecture outside of the 23-ku).
Perhaps they mean "everyday English as spoken by people unfamiliar with Japanese political boundaries"?
Sadly, I don't think there's going to be a very good citation for it, but I think, "and among people unfamiliar with specifics of Japanese political divisions, when people refer to Tokyo, they usually mean the 23-ku, not Tokyo Prefecture."