Japanese Addressing System - Address Parts

Address Parts

Japanese addresses begin with the largest division of the country, the prefecture. These are generally called ken (県), but there are also three other special prefecture types: to (都) for Tokyo, dō (道) for Hokkaidō and fu (府) for the two urban prefectures of Osaka and Kyoto.

Following the prefecture is the municipality. For a large municipality this is the city (shi, 市). Tokyo has both ordinary cities and special wards (ku, 区), each of which has the status of a city. For smaller municipalities, the address includes the district (gun, 郡) followed by the town (chō or machi, 町) or village (mura or son, 村).

The next element of the address is the location within the municipality. Many cities have wards (ku, 区), which in turn may be divided into machi or chō (町). Towns may have smaller parts with names like chō, ōaza (大字), or aza (字), or even smaller koaza (小字).

The final three elements of the address in Jūkyo hyōji (住居表示) style are the city district (chōme 丁目), the city block (ban 番) and finally the house number (gō 号). Chōme and ban numbers are usually assigned by order of proximity to the center of the municipality. Gō numbers are usually assigned by clockwise order around the ban city block. The final three elements of the address in Chiban (地番) style are the city district (chōme 丁目), the land number (banchi 番地) and finally the land number extension. The land number and land number extension designate a piece of land registered in the land registry. A land number extension is assigned when a piece of land is divided into two or more pieces in the registry. As these are all numbers, they are usually simply written as a string, 1-2-3, starting with the chōme and ending in the gō. In urban apartment buildings it is not unusual to add the apartment number as a fourth element. This three-element system is relatively new introduction, and is not completed in some areas such as older area of the cities or sparsely populated rural areas, where only the banchi is written after machi or aza.

Street names are seldom used in postal addresses (except in Kyoto and some Hokkaidō cities such as Sapporo), and most Japanese streets do not have names. Banchi blocks often have an irregular shape, as banchi 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. It is for this reason that when giving directions to a location, most people will offer cross streets, visual landmarks and subway stations such as "at Chūō-dori and Matsuya-dori across the street from Matsuya and Ginza station", for a store in Tokyo. In fact, many businesses have maps on their literature and business cards. In addition, 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 station exits.

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.