Japón posee tres niveles de divisiones territoriales administrativas de su territorio: nacional, prefecturas y municipal. La nación está dividida en 47 prefecturas. Cada prefectura posee numerosos municipios. Hay cuatro tipos de municipios en Japón: ciudades, ciudadelas, villas y barrios especiales, donde sólo el último se encuentra presente en Tokio. En japonés, este sistema se conoce como shichosonku (市町村区). El estatus de un municipio, si es una villa o ciudad, se decide por el gobierno de cada prefectura. Generalmente, una villa o una ciudadela puede ser promovida a ciudad cuando su población supera los 50 mil habitantes, y una ciudad puede (pero no es necesario) bajar a la categoría de ciudadela o villa cuando su población decae bajo los 50 mil habitantes. Un shi puede tener otras subdivisiones administrativas conocidas como barrio (区, ku), pero sin embargo no son municipios. Los únicos barrios que son municipios son los barrios especiales de Tokio, por lo tanto, un hecho a notar es que Tokio no es una ciudad. La Prefectura de Tokio se compone por 23 barrios especiales.

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The status of a municipality, if it is a village, town or city, is decided by the prefectural government. Generally, a village or town can be promoted to a city when its population increases above fifty thousand, and a city can (but need not) be demoted to a town or village when its population decreases below fifty thousand. The least-populated city, Utashinai, Hokkaidō, has a population of merely four thousand, while a town in the same prefecture, Otofuke, Hokkaidō, has nearly forty thousand residents. Some designated cities also have further administrative subdivisions, also known as wards. But, unlike the Special wards of Tokyo, these wards are not municipalities. The following are examples of 19 designated cities: \n* Fukuoka, the most populous city in the Kyūshū region \n* Hiroshima, the busy manufacturing city in the Chūgoku region of Honshū \n* Kobe, a major port on the Inland Sea, located in the center of Honshū near Osaka \n* Kitakyūshū, a city of just over one million inhabitants in Kyūshū \n* Kyoto, former capital, historic center and thriving modern city \n* Nagasaki, a port on the island of Kyūshū \n* Nagoya, center of a major automobile-manufacturing region on the eastern seaboard of Honshū \n* Osaka, a vast manufacturing city on the Inland Sea coast of Honshū \n* Sapporo, the largest city in Hokkaidō \n* Sendai, the principal center of northeast Honshū (also known as the Tōhoku region) \n* Yokohama, a port city just south of Tokyo The capital, Tokyo, no longer has city status. Tokyo Prefecture now encompasses 23 special wards, each a city unto itself, as well as many other cities, towns and even villages on the Japanese mainland and outlying islands. Each of the 23 special wards of Tokyo is legally equivalent to a city, though sometimes the 23 special wards as a whole are regarded as one city. For information on the former city of Tokyo, see Tokyo City; for information about present-day Tokyo Prefecture, see Tokyo. See List of cities in Japan for a complete list of cities. See also: Core city

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