# Why "Prefecture"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 3, 2004, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-prefecture/248417 "2004-06-03T07:54:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-prefecture/248417/1 "2004-06-03T07:54:55Z")
A Japanese province is called a “prefecture.” The word refers only to a type of organized land in Japan. My question is: Why don’t they use a Japanese word to describe this specifically Japanese entity? Where did this weird European word come from, and why doesn’t it describe anything found in Europe or America? ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-prefecture/248417/2 "2004-06-03T08:08:09Z")
A “Prefecture” is governed by a Prefect, say it like a Frenchman, Preee-fray. As in the “Prefect of Police.” As for why the Japanese choose to translate their term to “Prefecture” (rather than “State,” “County,” or even “District”) will soon be answered by a poster smarter than I am in all things Japanese. ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-prefecture/248417/3 "2004-06-03T12:38:51Z")
Regarding etymology, “praefectus” comes from Latin and means “put in front of something.” It is used in Latin texts for a variety of offices; the commander of a military unit, for example, might be said to be put “in front of” his soldiers, i.e. he’s commanding them. As said by **Paul in Saudi** , the term is used in French as well (in the Form “préfet”). They’re representatives of the state appointed by the Ministry of the Interior, one of their main repsonsibilities is police. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_Wright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@Steve\_Wright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_Wright)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-prefecture/248417/4 "2004-06-03T13:24:21Z")
Heck, we had prefects when I was at school (I never held a prefecture myself) … they were kids appointed as authority delegates (in a very limited way) by the teaching staff. Kind of like trusties in a maximum security prison. (School days? They were the happiest days of my life, you know.) Anyway. Prefectures (in the larger organizational sense) were a feature of the Roman Empire (hence the Latinate roots of the term, as so ably set out for us by **Schnitte** ) and of France. Could be geographical, or relate to some other definite sphere of responsibility (as with the aforementioned Prefect of Police). Apparently, it’s also a term used for “certain dignitaries of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, below the rank of a bishop.” So … the implications are that a “prefect”, generically, is some sort of appointive administrative office with sharply defined responsibilities, and those responsibilities comprise the “prefecture”. Does this match up to the organization in Japan? If so, that’d be why they picked the word, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-prefecture/248417/5 "2004-06-03T13:50:16Z")
I think the Japanese _do_ have a word in their own tongue for “prefecture.” It’s called “ken.” For example, when I lived in Kashiwazaki, in Niigata prefecture, mail addressed to me looked like this: Aaron XXXXXXXX [my last name] 105 Wakaba [two more words I don’t remember] Kashiwazaki-shi Niigata-ken 945 Japan In this case, the suffix -shi went at the end of the name of the city, and the suffix -ken went at the end of the name of the prefecture. ---
**Author:** ![jovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/0ea827/32.png) [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-prefecture/248417/6 "2004-06-03T14:24:19Z")
> [@HeyHomie](#): > > I think the Japanese _do_ have a word in their own tongue for “prefecture.” It’s called “ken.” Yes, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. There are 47 prefectures in Japan. In Japanese, however, only 43 of them are known as “ken”, like Gifu-ken, or Nara-ken, or Mie-ken. The exceptions are: Tokyo-to, Osaka-fu, Kyoto-fu and Hokkaido. (No suffix for Hokkaido, though it’s refered to as a “do”.) So, why are they called prefectures? Nowadays prefectures are headed by governors (_chiji_ in Japanese), who are elected officials like their American counterparts. It wasn’t always that way, though. Up until the end of WWII, the _chiji_ were appointed. French prefectures were, at the time the Japanese prefectural system was put in place, also appointed officials. “Prefecture” was then taken up as meaning “regional government headed by an appointed official.” ---
**Author:** ![OxyMoron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e9a140/32.png) [@OxyMoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OxyMoron)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-prefecture/248417/7 "2004-06-03T18:36:37Z")
A variant of the current to-do-fu-ken system was actually adopted 1871 during the Meiji period, and according to the [Oxford Japan Timeline](http://www.oxfordjapan.com/timeline.html) the governors were appointed by the central government. At the time, Japan studied western nations’ aministrative and political systems rather closely, especially those of France and Germany. So I suspect the translated term came from having followed a French model. Similarly, the translation of Japan’s _Kokkai_ has traditionally been “Diet,” based on the German word - the National Diet Library itself [notes](http://www.ndl.go.jp/en/publication/ndl_newsletter/104/50th.html) that the original 1889 Constution, which first created the _Kokkai_, “was largely the work of Ito Hirobumi, who was strongly influenced by German constitutional theories.” But _Kokkai_ translates just as easily to Parliament, Assembly, or Congress, and in fact when I lived there, the English side of the local Diet member’s business card said “Givenname Familyname, Congressman.” ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-prefecture/248417/8 "2004-06-03T18:46:08Z")
I think the most natural English translation of a foreign word meaning “political subdivision of a country” would be “province”. However, Japan [formerly had a bunch of subdivisions](http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Provinces_of_Japan), referred to in Japanese by several different names, which we called (in English) “provinces”. During the 19th century modernization of the country, they replaced those old, traditional subdivisions with new subdivisions. Since these were called by a different word in Japanese (actually, [several different Japanese words](http://www.harapan.co.jp/english/japan/kanji_prefecture.htm)), we used a different, somewhat more obscure English word meaning “political subdivision of a country” to translate the new term. As to why we settled on “prefecture” rather than “department” or “region”: The _Oxford English Dictionary_ gives one definition of “prefecture” as “Chinese _fu_, an administrative district or division of a province; also, applied to a corresponding district in Japan”; and one of the Japanese words translated to English as “prefecture” is _fu_–Japanese has many loanwords from Chinese. Also from the _OED_, the English word (well, borrowed into English from Latin) “prefect” was used to translate the Chinese word _chih-fu_ “head or governor of a _fu_ or department”. So, we used “prefect” as the rough equivalent or translated term of a Chinese title, _chih-fu_. It’s therefore logical enough to use “prefecture” to translate the Chinese word, _fu_, meaning the area governed by a _chih-fu_. (Actually, the relationship seems reversed between the two languages: in English, a prefecture is an area governed by a prefect, or the office of a prefect; in Chinese, it would appear that a _chih-fu_ is a guy in charge of a _fu_.) When the Japanese adopted the Chinese term as one of the terms for the new political subdivisions of Japan which replaced its old “provinces” following a reorganization of the country’s system of local government, we used an English word prefecture formerly used to express one of the underlying Chinese words (_fu_, along with _to_, _do_, and _ken_). ---
**Author:** ![OxyMoron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e9a140/32.png) [@OxyMoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OxyMoron)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2004, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-prefecture/248417/9 "2004-06-03T21:55:24Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > As to why we settled on “prefecture” rather than “department” or “region”: The _Oxford English Dictionary_ gives one definition of “prefecture” as “Chinese _fu_, an administrative district or division of a province; also, applied to a corresponding district in Japan”; and one of the Japanese words translated to English as “prefecture” is _fu_–Japanese has many loanwords from Chinese. Also from the _OED_, the English word (well, borrowed into English from Latin) “prefect” was used to translate the Chinese word _chih-fu_ “head or governor of a _fu_ or department”. So, we used “prefect” as the rough equivalent or translated term of a Chinese title, _chih-fu_. It’s therefore logical enough to use “prefecture” to translate the Chinese word, _fu_, meaning the area governed by a _chih-fu_. (Actually, the relationship seems reversed between the two languages: in English, a prefecture is an area governed by a prefect, or the office of a prefect; in Chinese, it would appear that a _chih-fu_ is a guy in charge of a _fu_.) When the Japanese adopted the Chinese term as one of the terms for the new political subdivisions of Japan which replaced its old “provinces” following a reorganization of the country’s system of local government, we used an English word prefecture formerly used to express one of the underlying Chinese words (_fu_, along with _to_, _do_, and _ken_). That’s certainly possible, since the _fu_ character appears to the same in this case - in my experience, it’s pretty rare for a “Chinese reading” of a _kanji_ to retain a Chinese pronunciation. But I’m still skeptical. First of all, it’s not at all clear that “we” (non-Japanese speakers) actually came up with the translation - it’s at least as logical to suppose that, as with the Diet example I gave above, some Japanese bureaucrat decided what Western word to use. Also, it appears that there were never more than three _fu_ (Kyoto, Osaka, and at one time, Tokyo), whereas there were and are lots of other administrative subdivisions whose names (whether in Japanese or in Chinese analogues) had never before been translated as “prefecture.” So, peculiar as it may be, I continue to suspect that the adoption of “prefecture” has more to do with French than Chinese. ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2004, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-prefecture/248417/10 "2004-06-04T10:31:05Z")
> [@OxyMoron](#): > > … Similarly, the translation of Japan’s _Kokkai_ has traditionally been “Diet,” based on the German word … A slight correction, if I may: diet is not a German word, but an English word, with Latin roots, referring to an institution of the Holy Roman Empire that in German was called _Reichstag_.