Hello and welcome to the newest episode of
YouTube’s favorite game show: How! Many! Words! Will! Sam! Mispronounce!! Today: one narrator, 33 Japanese words, and
thousands of commenters just waiting to pounce. Let’s get started. So, this is Japan. And this is Tokyo. And this is also Tokyo, which is kind of odd
because this and this are about this far apart. This is kind of odd, of course, because as
you may know from living in a place, places are typically in one general place, and not
several very far apart places. So, what’s going on here? Well, in order to understand why Tokyo includes
islands 700 miles or 1,200 kilometers away, you first have to understand the Japanese
prefecture system. Not to go all History of Japan on you, but
back a long time ago, Japan was divided into a ton of what were called hans, essentially
fiefdoms that were the property of feudal samurai lords called daimyo. But then in 1871 the Meiji government was
all like “hey, you know how everything is run by super-cool warlord samurais? Well, what if instead it was run by lame weak
nerds?” So, they switched over to what we call the
prefecture system, splitting Japan into 47 regions that serve as the first level of administrative
division. Now, one interesting thing about the prefecture
system is that Japanese people don’t call it the prefecture system. And I know what you’re thinking: “Well
yeah, obviously they don’t call it the prefecture system; they don’t call the country Japan,
either. They speak another language, idiot.” But while I may be an idiot, that’s actually
not the point I’m making; Japan doesn’t call them prefectures because they don’t
exactly have a word for prefectures. Instead, they have four words for them. Of the 47 prefectures, 43 are ken, “prefectures
proper,” two are fu, “urban prefectures,” one is do, a “circuit prefecture,” and
one is to, a “metropolis,” which is Tokyo. This system is sometimes collectively referred
to as the todofuken system, because, you know, to, do, fu, and ken. It’s some top-grade lazy naming; it would
be like if Americans called the federal government SupremeCourtCongressJoeBiden or named a band
Crosby Stills Nash and Young. Prefectures are further split up into municipalities,
which also come in four forms: cho, which means towns; mura, villages; shi, cities;
and ku, the special wards of Tokyo, which formerly made up Tokyo City. Prefectures and municipalities have extremely
similar governing structures: prefectures have a governor, municipalities have a mayor,
and both have councils, all of whom are directly elected to a four year term. There’s not a real formal delineation of
powers between the prefectures and municipalities––they kind of share most responsibilities––but
together, they run essentially all elements of domestic life in Japan apart from diplomacy,
national security, and trials: schools, police forces, roads, weird little mascots, et cetera. In fact, local government accounts for 70%
of government spending in Japan, while the remaining 30% goes to defending the island
from its legendary, monstrous enemy: white guys who are way too into anime. So now let’s do what Half as Interesting
does best and talk about some tiny islands. These are the Bonin, or Ogasawara Islands. They consist of all these islands, but the
only inhabited ones are these ones: Chichijima and Hahajima. They were first visited by Europeans in 1543,
then visited by the Japanese in 1670, then claimed by the Brits in 1827, then claimed
by the Japanese in 1862, but then the Japanese gave up on that a year later, but then twelve
years later they gave up on giving up and claimed them again, and put settlers on them
and told all the European and American settlers who were already there that they were Japanese
now, creating the world’s first weeaboos. And these are the Izu Islands, commonly called
the Seven Islands of Izu, because of course, there are seventeen islands and nine of them
are inhabited. The Izu are basically Australia but smaller:
the Japanese used them as convict settlements until about the middle of the Edo period,
and now they’re a popular tourist destination thanks to their scenic beauty, ecological
diversity, and propensity to try and murder you. So basically, here’s the deal: Japan has
all these islands, and they’ve got to administer them somehow, but they don’t want to make
them their own prefecture, because only a handful of people live there. So they became part of Tokyo’s prefecture,
Tokyo Metropolis, because, well, Tokyo has a lot of money, it’s the capital, it’s
on the water, and it has a major port for travel between the mainland and the islands. In fact, the only way to visit the Ogasawara
islands is a weekly 24-hour ferry ride from Tokyo. Ultimately, the key to understanding why Tokyo
includes these far-off islands is despite the fact that most foreigners think of Tokyo
as a city, the same way we’d think of London or Chicago or Flavortown, it’s not a city––it’s
a prefecture. Because the islands are so far away, Tokyo
has actually categorized them into four subprefectures, a relatively unusual form of sub-government
in Japan that includes regional offices to help add more structure on top of municipalities. The Izu islands are divided into the Oshima
subprefecture, the Miyake subprefecture, and the Hacijo subprefecture, and the Ogasawara
Islands are all one subprefecture: the Ogasawara Islands, and a handful of further-out islands
that historically weren’t considered part of the Ogasawara islands, the Volcano Islands,
Nishinoshima, Minamitorishima, and Okinotorishima, which are maybe islands or maybe a cold-hearted
ploy at expanding Japan’s EEZ. It’s actually a fascinating story––if
only someone had made an easily digestible, well-researched, humor-filled video on that
topic… oh wait someone did. This system can lead to some weird consequences,
though. For example, Tokyo’s population density
is technically listed as 6,363 people per square kilometer, but that number is bigly
skewed by the islands, which have a lot of area and a not lot of people: if you just
considered mainland Tokyo, its population density would be about 7,780 per square kilometer. Another challenge is that the governor of
Tokyo prefecture has to be voted on by everyone in Tokyo, which means that the mayor of all
this can’t be officially declared until ballots come in from here. Yet another difficulty is that our data suggests
that less than half of the residents of the Tokyo Islands are subscribed to Nebula. Look, by now you’ve probably heard the spiel
before––Nebula is home to an incredible amount of Original and ad-free content from
all your favorite educational creators: me, Real Life Lore, Thomas Frank, me, Legal Eagle,
me, Second Thought, me and even, me. But you probably haven’t heard me say before
that right now you can get the Nebula-CuriosityStream bundle for 42% off, because that sale is an
absolutely bonkers deal and it’s only happening for a limited time through the 28th of November. If you’ve already watched the HAI Bricks
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Nebula Original Series, Modern Conflicts: full-length videos in the same form as regular
Real Life Lore content that covers more controversial topics, like Israel and Gaza, or the Armenia-Azerbaijan
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when you do, you’ll be helping support independent creators like HAI.
Love seeing this as I recently moved to Japan