There will be polls to pick governors in 12 prefectures as well as members for 44 (out of 47) prefectural governments, along with mayoral and local-assembly elections in over 2,000 towns and cities.
Takuya Tasso, governor of Iwate, one of the worst-hit prefectures, says the government is losing interest in the region.From the start, reconstruction called for money, energy and vision.
Masayoshi Son, a wireless tycoon, plans to build huge solar-power stations and a new grid to connect Japanese prefectures.
When, Hall wrote later, he recounted how the Okinawans had no "wars or weapons of destruction", Napoleon was amazed.Today, few spots in the world are as heavy with weapons of destruction as Okinawa, and they are American: this southernmost of Japan's prefectures is home to half the 50,000 servicemen America maintains in the country.
He is already rich: Kyodo news agency this year suggested that Mr Ozawa and his wife, the daughter of a construction magnate, together have assets of almost 2 billion yen, including villas and land in six prefectures, giving him a large potential war chest.
A government committee gave warning this summer that there was a 70% chance that a big earthquake between 6.7 and 7.2 in intensity would hit Tokyo or surrounding prefectures in the next 30 years (a wide range, it is true).
In such prefectures, one in eight residents belongs to some form of voluntary organisation compared with one in 24 for Japan as a whole.
Too many municipal administrations exist, with shaky tax bases, and indeed prefectures too.Mr Kawamura reckons the movement will come to resemble the alliance of fiefs in western Japan that helped topple the shogunate in the 1860s.
The list also includes Fukuoka on the south-western island of Kyushu, the small southern prefecture of Okinawa and two cities in Niigata and Fukui prefectures.
The population of Iwate, the most northerly of the three prefectures that bore the brunt of the tsunami, has declined by 46,000 or nearly 3% since.After the disaster the central government pledged ¥25 trillion $213 billionn) over five years.
Throughout the year, 136 elections will be held in prefectures and big cities, along with more than 400 local ones in smaller towns.
