A city市, is the local administrative segment in Japan. Cities are ranked on the same level as towns町, in addition to villages村, , with the difference that they are not a element of districts郡, . Like other innovative administrative units ,they are defined by the Local Autonomy Law of 1947.
Cities were featured under the "city code" shisei, 市制 of 1888 during the "Great Meiji mergers" Meiji no daigappei, 明治の大合併 of 1889. The -shi replaced the previous urban districts/"wards/cities" -ku that had existed as primary subdivisions of prefectures besides rural districts -gun since 1878. Initially, there were 39 cities in 1889: only one in most prefectures, two in a few Yamagata, Toyama, Osaka, Hyōgo, Fukuoka, in addition to none in some – Miyazaki became the last prefecture to contain its first city in 1924. In Okinawa-ken and Hokkai-dō which were not yet fully equal prefectures in the Empire, major urban settlements remained organized as urban districts until the 1920s: Naha-ku and Shuri-ku, the two urban districts of Okinawa were only turned into Naha-shi and Shuri-shi in May 1921, and six -ku of Hokkaidō were converted into district-independent cities in August 1922.
By 1945, the number of cities countrywide had increased to 205. After WWII, their number near doubled during the "great Shōwa mergers" of the 1950s and continued to grow so that it surpassed the number of towns in the early 21st century see the List of mergers and dissolutions of municipalities in Japan. As of October 1 2018, there are 792 cities of Japan.