Although Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara may have portrayed himself as a champion of local autonomy with his idea of a local tax on banks, a less colorful effort to challenge the central government is in progress by towns in Yamagata Prefecture that are out to revise an outdated naming system.
Late last month, assembly members from five towns in the prefecture handed Home Affairs Minister Kosuke Hori a written request and the signatures of roughly 5,200 people asking that laws be revised so the regional unit "gun," or county, is scrapped.
The action is part of a movement to abolish the mandatory inclusion of county names -- which supporters say are an anachronistic remnant of the Meiji Period -- in official documents.
"From about 10 years ago, I began thinking it's a nuisance to have to write the name every time I drew up an official document," said 46-year-old Yukio Kanno, a member of the town assembly of Takahata, in Higashi Okitama Gun.