Municipality Search (Japan)
Search over 1,700 Japanese municipalities by map or keyword. Find population, households, area, and prefecture ranking for each city, town, and village.
Browse by prefecture
Map data: mapsvg.com (CC BY 4.0)
What this municipality search covers
This page lets you look up any of Japan’s 1,700-plus municipalities, either by clicking a prefecture on the map or by typing a name. For each one it shows the population, number of households, area and official local government code, alongside its population rank within the prefecture and nationwide, plus economic figures such as taxable income and estimated GDP.
The economic figures are reference values derived from public statistics. The estimated GDP in particular is a sum of industry-level value added from the Economic Census; it is not an official gross regional product, because Japan does not normally publish GDP at the municipal level. Population and household counts are being filled in municipality by municipality as the data is retrieved, so some fields still appear as unavailable.
How to find a municipality
- Pick a prefecture on the map Click any prefecture on the map of Japan to list the municipalities it contains. This is the quickest route when you are working from geography rather than a name.
- Search by keyword You can narrow the list by municipality name, prefecture name or part of the kana reading, so a half-remembered name is usually enough to surface candidates.
- Sort the list Click a column heading to sort by that field, such as population or area. This is the fastest way to see which municipalities sit at the top or bottom of a measure.
- Open an individual page Selecting a municipality opens its own page, with rankings and economic data set out in more detail than the list can show.
Tips for getting more out of it
- If you're not sure of the exact name, try typing the prefecture name or part of the reading instead.
- Because the same municipality name can exist in multiple prefectures, always check the prefecture shown alongside the result.
- The first two digits of the code identify the prefecture, so the list page groups municipalities by prefecture.
- Wards of designated cities (such as Chuo-ku in Sapporo) are not independent local governments, so they are listed together under their parent city.
- Population and household figures are added municipality by municipality as they become available, and show as "Not yet available" until then.
When this search is useful
Sizing up a location for a store or sales territory
Population, household counts and taxable income can be compared side by side, which gives you a numeric starting point for judging the scale of a candidate area.
Looking up a local government code
Administrative paperwork and master data in business systems often require the official code. Here you can find it from the municipality name alone.
Comparing places to move to
Population size and area together tell you a lot about whether somewhere is urban or suburban in character, which is a practical input when weighing up living environments.
Backing up research or a report
Because rankings within the prefecture and nationwide are shown, you can cite a concrete position rather than describing an area in vague terms.
Terms used in this data
- Local government code (団体コード)
- An identifier assigned to each municipality. The first two digits denote the prefecture, and the code is used widely in administrative procedures and information systems.
- Government-designated city (政令指定都市)
- A city of at least 500,000 residents designated by government ordinance. Such cities are divided into wards, though a ward is not itself an independent local authority.
- Taxable income (課税対象所得)
- The total income subject to resident tax. It serves as a rough indicator of the income level of the people living in an area.
- Economic Census (経済センサス)
- A complete national survey of establishments and enterprises. It supplies baseline data on the local economy, including value added by industry.
- Households (世帯数)
- The number of units sharing a livelihood. Dividing population by households gives the average household size, which reveals trends in family structure.
- Prefecture (都道府県)
- Japan’s 47 top-level regional authorities. Every municipality belongs to exactly one, and the two tiers together form the country’s local government structure.
Frequently asked questions
Side Note — The story behind the National Local Government Code
Japan's six-digit "National Local Government Code", which uniquely identifies every municipality, was established in 1968 by the Ministry of Home Affairs (now the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications) to make information processing more efficient. The first two digits represent the prefecture, the next three represent the municipality, and the final digit is a check digit used to catch data-entry errors.
Thanks to that check digit, mistyping even a single digit usually produces an inconsistency that can be caught immediately. Even though the scheme was designed more than half a century ago, it is still used throughout Japanese administrative systems today, including the Basic Resident Register Network.
When municipalities merge, a new code is issued and the old one is retired rather than reused. Looking through the full list of codes, you can still spot traces of the many renumberings that happened during the wave of municipal mergers in the early 2000s.
The map of Japan on the top page uses map data created by mapsvg.com (CC BY 4.0).