Japanese addressing system
The Japanese addressing system is used to identify a specific location in Japan.
When written in Japanese characters, addresses start with the largest geographical entity and proceed to the most specific one. The Japanese system is complex, the product of the natural growth of urban areas, as opposed to the systems used in cities that are laid out as grids and divided into quadrants or districts.
When written in Latin characters, addresses follow the convention used by most Western addresses and start with the smallest geographic entity and proceed to the largest. However, even when translated using Latin characters, Japan Post requires that the address also is written in Japanese to ensure correct delivery.
Address parts
Japanese addresses begin with the largest division of the country, the prefecture. Most of these are called, but there are also three other special prefecture designations: for Tokyo, for Hokkaido and for the two urban prefectures of Osaka and Kyoto.Following the prefecture is the municipality. For a large municipality this is the cities of Japan. Cities that have a large enough population and are regarded as such by order of the Cabinet of Japan are called designated cities, and are subdivided into wards of Japan, where in the prefecture of Tokyo, 23 of them are designated as the Special wards of Tokyo with added authority to the mayors. For smaller municipalities, the address includes the districts of Japan followed by the town or village. In Japan, a city is separate from districts, which contain towns and villages.
For addressing purposes, municipalities may be divided into or and/or. Despite using the same character as town, the here is purely a unit of address, not administration; likewise, there are also address divisions that are not administrative special wards. There are two common schemes:
- Municipality is divided first into and then into city districts. Example: 台東区
- Municipality is divided into, which may be divided into, which may in turn be divided into. Example: 青森市
Below this level, two styles of addressing are possible.
- In the newer style, enacted into law by the 1962 Act on Indication of Residential Address and used by the majority of the country, the next level is the city block, always followed by the building number. Building 10 in block 5 would be formally written as. For apartment buildings, the apartment number may be appended to the building with a hyphen, so apartment 103 in the aforementioned building would be 5番10-103号.
- In the older style, still used in some rural and older city areas, the next level is the area/block name, the next smaller level is the lot number, optionally followed by a lot number extension. The lot number designates a plot of land registered in the land registry, and a lot number extension is assigned when a piece of land is divided into two or more pieces in the registry. This can be written as any of, or. Land not designated by the registry is known as, with any dwellings there being.
Street names are seldom used in postal addresses
blocks often have an irregular shape, as numbers were assigned by order of registration in the older system, meaning that especially in older areas of the city they will not run in a linear order. For this reason, when giving directions to a location, people will often offer cross streets, visual landmarks and subway stations, such as "at Chūō- and Matsuya- across the street from Matsuya and Ginza station" for a store in Tokyo. Many businesses feature maps on their literature and business cards. Signs attached to utility poles often specify the city district name and block number, and detailed block maps of the immediate area are sometimes posted near bus stops and train stations in larger cities.
In addition to the address itself, all locations in Japan have a postal code. After the reform of 1998, this begins with a three-digit number, a hyphen, and a four-digit number, for example 123-4567. A postal mark, 〒, may precede the code to indicate that the number following is a postal code.
Address order
In Japanese, the address is written in order from largest unit to smallest, with the addressee's name last of all. For example, the address of the isor
The order is reversed when writing in rōmaji. The format recommended by Japan Post is:
In this address, Tokyo is the prefecture; Chiyoda-ku is one of the special wards; Marunouchi 2-Chome is the name of the city district; and 7-2 is the city block and building number. In practice it is common for the chōme to be prefixed, as in Japanese, resulting in the somewhat shorter:
While almost all elements of the address are reversed when written in rōmaji, connected strings of numbers are treated as units and not reversed. Firstly, the "city block and building number" is a unit, and its digits are not reversed – in this example it is "7-2" in both Japanese and roman, though the Japanese is partly reversed to "7-2, Marunouchi 2-Chōme" in roman if chōme is separate. Similarly, if the chōme is included, these also form a unit, so in this example the string is 2-7-2 in both Japanese and Western alphabet.
Special cases
As mentioned above, there are certain areas of Japan that use somewhat unusual address systems. Sometimes the differing system has been incorporated into the official system, as in Sapporo, while in Kyoto the system is completely different from, but used alongside the official system. Kyoto and Sapporo have addresses based on their streets being laid out in a grid plan, unlike most Japanese cities.Kyoto
Although the official national addressing system is in use in Kyoto – in Chiban style, with ward, district, and land number, the chō divisions are very small, numerous, and there is often more than one chō with the same name within a single ward, making the system extremely confusing. As a result, most residents of Kyoto use an unofficial system based instead on street names, a form of vernacular geography. This system is, however, recognized by the post office and by government agencies.For added precision, the street-based address can be given, followed by the chō and land number. Sometimes multiple houses share a given land number, in which case the name must also be specified; this name is generally displayed in front of the house on a, often decoratively presented, as are house numbers in other countries.
The system works by naming the intersection of two streets and then indicating if the address is north, south, east, or west of the intersection. More precisely, the two streets of the intersection are not treated symmetrically: one names the street that the address is on, then gives a nearby cross street, and then specifies the address relative to the cross street. What this means is that a building can have more than one address depending on which cross street intersection is chosen.
For instance, the address of Kyoto Tower is listed on their website as:
Following the postcode, this contains the city and ward, followed by the unofficial address, a space, and then the official address:
This address means "south of the intersection of Karasuma and Shichijō streets" – more precisely, "on Karasuma, [|below] Shichijō". The street address may alternatively be given as 烏丸通七条下ル, indicating clearly that the address is on Karasuma street.
However, the system is flexible and allows for various alternatives, such as:
For less well known buildings, the official address is often given after the informal one, as in the address for the Shinatora Ramen restaurant:
As the initial part of the address is familiar, it is often abbreviated – for example, can be abbreviated to, as in the Kyoto Tower listing. More informally, particularly on return addresses for in-town mail, the city and ward can be abbreviated to the initial character, with a dot or comma to indicate abbreviation – there are only 11 wards of Kyoto, so this is easily understood. For example, is abbreviated to and is abbreviated to. Combining these, one may abbreviate the address of Kyoto Tower to:
Sapporo
Sapporo's system, though official, differs in structure from regular Japanese addresses. The city center is divided into quadrants by two intersecting roads, Kita-Ichijo and Soseigawa; blocks are then named based on their distance from this point, and farther from the city center, multiple blocks are included in each. The east–west distance is indicated by chōme, while the north–south distance is indicated by jō, which has been incorporated into the chō name.The address to Sapporo JR Tower is:
This address indicates that it is the fifth building on a block located on 5 jō north and 2 chōme west of the center, named with the actual cardinal names of kita, minami, nishi, and higashi. The directional names for jō extend for about 7 kilometers to the north–south along the main Soseigawa Dori, but only about 3 kilometers at the most to the east and west; outside of that area, jō have other names, though the starting point of each is still the corner in the direction of the city center, often using landmarks such as the Hakodate Main Line or large roads to mark the new numbering.
For example, far in the outskirts is the Sapporo Tachibana Hospital, at:
Building 12 on block 3 of a chōme measuring 11 jō north and 2 chōme west of where the Hakodate Main Line meets Tarukawa Street. Or Toyohira Ward office, at:
Building 1 on block 1 of a chōme measuring 6 jō south and 10 chōme east of where a small street meets the Toyohira River. The direction is understood based on the quadrant of the city the jō is considered to be in, which may be off from the actual direction to the city center, depending on the landmark used.
Far-flung and less crowded parts of the city may instead use a standard chō name, rather than a numbered jō, such as Makomanai.