Watching the Iron Chef tonight they made references to several “prefectures”. I gather that this is the Japanese equivilant to our states.
Is this correct?
And what about Canada and its “provences”? I also noticed that the Mexican flag says “Estates Unidos Mexico”. Do they really call themselves the “United States of Mexico”? What other names do countries give their parts?
It’s ‘provinces’, not ‘provences’. Provence is a part of France. 
I’m not sure about Japan, but, yes, those are ‘states’ in Mexico. And also Brasil, I think. It seems that a lot of large federal countries call their sub-units ‘States’.
I believe that in the case of the United States of America, the original organization was a loose voluntary union between entities of relatively-equal power, hence the reference to ‘States’ in the name and not ‘provinces’ or whatever. Only later was there centralization of power at Washington.
In contrast, Canada was formed from British North America, with the imperial government rearranging its realms there and creating a new structure for them. Hence the use of ‘provinces’ and not ‘states’–they were very much subordinate entities.
Ironically, Canada is now much more decentralized than the United States: Canadian provinces have much more power in their peoples’ daily lives than US states, compared to the respective federal governments.
Japanese prefectures or ken are the primary administrative divisions of Japan. (Whey ken is translated “prefecture” instead of “province” or “department” I’m not sure.) In the sense that the 50 states are the primary administrative divisions of the U.S., the ken are the closest equivalent, but politically speaking there is a difference in that the word “state” implies “sovereign entity”, and, while the Civil War put to rest the idea that American states are sovereign in the sense that the State of Israel or the State of Kuwait is sovereign, the U.S. still has a federal system in which the states have powers along with the central government. Im pretty sure that Japan, by contrast, has a unitary form of government in which the ken are simply creatures of the central government, not entities with any sovereignty in their own right. In this respect, Canadian provinces are more like American states, since Canada has a federal government as well. Mexico is officially the Estados Unidos Mexicanos, the United Mexican States, which name they clearly ripped off from us, and constitutionally speaking the principal administrative divisions of Mexico are “states” in the American sense within a federal system of government.
There are of course lots of names for internal divisions of other countries–“province” is a pretty basic one, as is “department”. “Province” can be used for an administrative division of a unitary country, or it can be used in a federal setting. “Department” (as in France, but lots of other countries as well) would definitely imply a unitary government. “State” of course would always indicate a federal form of government.
A couple others: Brazil is officially the United States of Brazil; and Colombia, the United States of Colombia.
Administrative divisions often reflect locality or descent. Countries that were once French colonies are usually divided into departments, countries that separated from Britain are sometimes divided into counties, and many (royalist) Arab countries are composed of governorates.
Brazil was officially called the United States of Brazil for a while (before that, it had been the Brazilian Empire), but it is now officially called the Federative Republic of Brazil; it is still a federal state, and is still divided into “states”. Colombia was formerly known as the United States of New Granada and the United States of Colombia, but has been the Republic of Colombia since the 1880’s. I don’t believe Colombia has a federal system of government any more; its local divisions are departments.
Oh, and Indonesia was known as the United States of Indonesia for a while, but this was soon changed to Republic of Indonesia (and the federal system was replaced with a unitary government).
Building on MEB - as far as I could determine Japan’s prefectures were about equivalent to the counties I knew back in Maryland. (Actually, they might not even have been as powerful as that - Maryland has a strong-county system.) When I was an assistant teacher I worked for the prefectural board of education, which handled my day-to-day assignments, but the program under whose aegis I worked was a creature of the national Ministry of Education. The local board had no control over my salary and could not alter my contract without approval from Tokyo, which everyone knew would take too long to bother with for anything other than a total disaster (commission of a crime, etc.).
The Prefecture had an elected governor and I think a council of some sort, but these were little more than instruments for distributing patronage and resolving local disputes. Unlike a U.S. state or Canadian province, there was very little in the way of local law.
The CIA World Factbook is a little inaccurate on this, calling everything in Japan a prefecture. Actually, there are the following four different types of administrative divisions:
43 ken (prefectures). Roughly equivalent to states in the US, but much less independent. Some difference in size, but nothing like Texas vs. Rhode Island.
2 fu (Urban offices). Kyoto and Osaka. Cities and urban areas big enough to administered separately.
1 to (Metropolis). Tokyo, which technically isn’t a city, but a metropolis about as big as a prefecture, which includes several cities inside of it.
1 doo (Territory? The character for this just means “street” or “path”, but it hardly seems accurate). Hokkaido, which is much larger than any of the prefectures, and not very densely populated (other than Sapporo city).
The boss of each of these is referred to as a X-choo (kenchoo, tochoo, etc.) all of which get translated to English as “governor”.
At the next level down, you get shi (city), ku (ward), machi (town), gun (rural area), mura (village) and choo (neighborhood), which pretty much all serve the same purpose.
–sublight.
I can’t believe someone missed the chance to point out that Virgina, Mass, KY and PA are commenwealths not state…Yeah yeah it’s the same thing but it’s fun to point out.
Australia has states but it is the Commenwealth of Australia.