Fu (administrative division)

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. 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. Japanese language uses the Chinese character: (i) as a part of words, such as government, shogunate, Cabinet Office, and legislature, or (ii) as the name of a category of prefectures. List of Fu prefectures of 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 setting up 10 circuits overseeing the Chinese prefectures, including 43 commanderies (都督府, 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 (京兆府), which including the capital city Chang'an and Henan-fu, which including the secondary capital Luoyang during the Tang Dynasty.