自由民権運動
An early proposal to replace the prefectures with states "(-shū)" and transform Japan into a federal state was Ueki Emori's 1881 draft constitution (, "Tōyō Dai-Nihon-koku kokken-an"), one of the more well-known and radical manifestations of the many so-called "private" (i.e. not government-sponsored) constitutional drafts that sprang from the Freedom and People's Rights Movement in the 1880s.