Fu () is a traditional administrative division of Chinese origin used in the East Asian cultural sphere, translated variously as commandery, prefecture, urban prefecture, or city. They were first instituted as a regular form of administrative division of China's Tang Empire, but were later adopted in Vietnam, Japan and Korea. At present, only two fu still remain: the prefectures of Kyoto and Osaka in Japan.
The term fu is currently also used in Chinese to translate the provinces of Thailand, but not those of mainland China, Taiwan or other countries.
Meaning
Fu (府) means an office or a command institution. The character appears in the Chinese words for "government" (政府, zhėngfǔ) or "official's residence" (府邸, fǔdǐ), and names of official institutions such as the "Imperial Household Department" (內務府, Nèiwùfǔ) in China or "Office of the President" (總統府, Zǒngtǒngfǔ) in Taiwan.
The Japanese language uses the Chinese character: (i) as a part of words, such as , , , and , or (ii) as the name of a category of prefectures.
China
One of the earlier uses of fu as part of the name of an administrative division was the Protectorate of the Western Regions (西域都護府, Xīyù Dūhù Fǔ) of the Han Empire in 60 BC. Duhu Fu, usually translated as "protectorate", literally meant "Office of the Commander-Protector".
In 627, the second emperor of the Tang dynasty, Emperor Taizong ( 626−649), reorganized political divisions by setting up 10 circuits overseeing the Chinese prefectures, including 43 commanderies (, dūdū fǔ, literally "Office of the Commander-Governor"), which were border prefectures with a more powerful governor. Zhou was the more common name for an inland prefecture. Dudu Fu was shortened to Fu and the convention developed that larger prefectures would be named fu, while smaller prefectures would be called zhou. One of the earliest cities to be called a fu was Jingzhao-fu (), which including the capital city Chang'an and Henan-fu, which including the secondary capital Luoyang during the Tang dynasty.
By the time of the 14th–century Ming dynasty, the term had become common across provinces: typically, each prefecture under province was called a fu. Fu of Ming and Qing dynasty are sometimes translated as "prefectures", Shuntian Prefecture for instance. Sub-prefectures, such as that which administered Macao's inner harbor from Qianshan, were called "military/civil fu" (t s jūnmínfǔ).
After the end of the Qing dynasty in 1912, the Republic of China abolished fu in order to streamline administrative divisions, recategorizing them into counties or cities. The People's Republic of China inherited these divisions of mainland China in 1949 and did not reinstate the fu. Many former fu have become prefecture-level cities.
Japan
As part of the Taika Reform in (645), the capitals of the provinces of Japan were named . The fu character is an element still found in several Japanese city names, such as , , , , and the old name for Shizuoka, .
During the Meiji Restoration, the newly formed Meiji government enacted Fuhanken Sanchisei in 1868, splitting the country into three varieties of prefecture. One of these were fu, used for urban prefectures as opposed to . The first two were created on 14 June 1868: Kyoto-fu and Hakodate-fu. By the end of 1868, 10 fu had been established: Kyoto, Hakodate, Osaka, Nagasaki, Edo (later Tokyo), Kanagawa, Watarai, Nara, Echigo (later Niigata) and Kōfu. Due to some prefectures gaining non-urban land or being amalgamated into other territories in 1869, three remained: Kyoto-fu, Osaka-fu and Tokyo-fu.
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese government wished to tighten control of the local autonomy of the different areas of Tokyo. The Home Ministry published a plan to rename Tokyo to a , but the special wards of Tokyo (35 in 1938) objected to the plan. In 1943 the plan was implemented, and Tokyo-fu and Tokyo-shi were merged to become the current Tokyo Metropolis. This brought the number of fu in Japan to its current number of two: Kyoto-fu and Osaka-fu. There is currently a plan which will turn Osaka to a metropolis, which would leave the amount of urban prefectures to one if successful.
Korea
Bu (부, 府) has been used in Korea since the Goryeo dynasty as a suffix designating a city. The city of Kaesong was designated Kaesong-bu in 995. The 1485 code of law Gyeongguk daejeon designates the city of Seoul as Hanseong-bu (漢城府) and Kaesong as Kaesong-bu. In the 17th century, additional areas were designated bu, including Ganghwa-bu, Suwon-bu and Gwangju-bu.