A Geographical Study in the Now Proceeding Municipality Amalgamation in Japan

在过去的两年里，我对德国八个州的市政组织进行了调查，以便为日本正在进行的市政改革提供一些有效的材料。正如以前估计的那样，西欧没有国家现在再次执行市政改革。在前西德，在20世纪70年代不仅形成了正常类型的合并，而且还形成了几种类型的市政工会（Gerneindeverbande），人口为5000或8000人。很快，所有的市政工会都保留到今天，没有转移到正常类型的市政。其主要原因是在不丧失自治自治权的前提下获得现代市政能力。人们认识到，对德国公民来说，在他们的城市中保持汉堡和Ubersichtbarkeit的理念是非常重要的。大城市也有贝兹尔克的组织，这是由于各区的自治。而在日本，由于明治时代的融合，小村自治在近代化的过程中已经丧失，真正意义上的自治和地方民主思想并没有形成。此外，早期废除枪支组织似乎对城市的发展产生了明显的影响。由于我在德国的学习尚未完成，所以我对日本市政改革的研究没有进展。然而，我写了一篇关于日本正在进行的市政改革的批判性论文。然后我认为，在大规模的市政合并之后，市政的财政状况不会得到如此改善，在难以维持现有的公共服务水平以及破坏社区意识的情况下。

In the last two years 1 surveyed the municipal onganisations in the eight states of Germany in order to supply some effective materials to the now ongoing municipal reform in Japan. As previously estimated, there are no countries in Western Europe executing the municipal reform now again. In the former West Germany not only amalgamations of normal type but also municipal unions (Gerneindeverbande) of several types with the population of 5000 or 8000 were formed in the 1970s. Fast all of municipal unions remain today without moving to the municipalities of normal type. The main reasons are in getting the modern municipal abilities without losing the right of self-government for the membered municipalities. It is recognized that it is very important for German citizens to keep the idea of Burgernahe and Ubersichtbarkeit in their municipalities. Large cities also have the organization of Bezirk owing to the self-government of wards. Contrarily in Japan, the self-government of small villages was lost already in the modernization by the amalgamation of Meiji era so that the real idea of self-government and local democrapy has not grown. In addition, it seems that the abolishment of gun-organization in early time has obviously influenced to the development of municipalities. Since my study in Germany does not yet complete, my research about the Japanese municipal reform has not progressed. However, I wrote a critical paper about the now ongoing municipal reform in Japan. Then I maintained that after the municipal amalgamation of large scale the financial situation of municipalities will be not so improved, under the difficult maintainance of the present level of public services as well as in destroying the community consciousness.