Difference between city and prefecture?

Question:

Hello, I was asked on a reference form between 'Kyoto City' and Kyoto Prefecture". What is the difference between these two? Thanks!

P.S. There are many other listings such as Chiba Prefecture & Chiba City, etc...

Answer:

A city is in a prefecture. A prefecture is like a US State, it has many cities in it.

Example in America:

New York City is a City in New York State. There are many cities in New York State, New York City is just one of them.

For Japan:

Kyoto City is a city within Kyoto Prefecture, there are many other cities in Kyoto Prefecture, Kyoto City is just one of them.

There are 47 prefectures in Japan, each of them have towns, cities, etc within them. Interesting note, Tokyo is not a city, but considered one of Japan's prefectures, there are cities within Tokyo, none of them named "Tokyo City" (which ceased to exist in 1942 when it merged with Tokyo Prefecture to form Tokyo Metropolis). Internationally though Tokyo is still often called a city (when in Japanese law it is not a city) for historical purposes, and it's just easier to explain it that way.
However if you ever need to mail a package to Tokyo, you would put TOKYO in the section that says "state/province" and the name of the city within Tokyo in the "city" section of the customs/postal forms.

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>>Japan is roughly the size of California, so I wouldn't say a prefecture is like a state. It's more like a county in the US.<<

Based on that assumption, the State of Rhode Island isn't a State because it's 106times SMALLER then the state of California.

It has nothing to do with the size but the governmental/administrative divisions of the country.

A Prefecture of Japan is analogous to a US state in the powers it executes and it's administrative make up. A prefecture is headed by a governor like a US State. US Within each prefecture are cities/towns/villages etc etc, just like how a US state is made up of counties, cities, towns, etc etc.