Tokyo Prefecture
In 1868, the medieval city of Edo, seat of the Tokugawa government, was renamed Tokyo, and the offices of Tokyo Prefecture ("-fu") were opened. The extent of Tokyo Prefecture was initially limited to the former Edo city, but rapidly augmented to be comparable with the present Tokyo Metropolis. In 1878, the Meiji government's reorganization of local governments subdivided prefectures into counties or districts ("gun", further subdivided into towns and villages, later reorganized similar to Prussian districts) and districts or wards ("ku") which were in ordinary prefectures cities as a whole, e.g. today's Hiroshima City ("-shi") was then "Hiroshima-ku"; the three major cities of Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto were each subdivided into several such wards. In Tokyo Prefecture, this created 15 wards (listed below) and six counties/districts.