Signal Japan's municipalities fell from 3,200 to under 1,720 in the 2000 to 2006 mergers

Summary

Japan's basic municipalities numbered close to 70,000 in the early Meiji era and were reduced through great mergers in the Meiji, Showa and Heisei periods to fewer than 1,720 after the 2000s. The mergers of cities, towns and villages between 2000 and 2006 alone cut their number from 3,200 to fewer than 1,720. The report explains that these changes reflected the expansion of local autonomy but also cannot be separated from the response to population decline. Merging local administrative districts into wider units is later listed, alongside drawing foreign workers into the regions, as a response to local extinction. The report presents this merger history as the institutional backdrop against which warnings of local extinction emerged in the 2010s.