There are a small number of municipalities in Japan whose names are written in hiragana or katakana, together known as kana, rather than kanji as is traditional for Japanese place names. Many city names written in kana have kanji equivalents that are either phonetic manyōgana, or whose kanji are outside of the jōyō kanji. Others, such as Tsukuba in Ibaraki Prefecture, are taken from localities or landmarks whose names continue to be written in kanji. Another cause is the merger of multiple cities, one of which had the original kanji — in such cases, the hiragana place name is used to create a new identity for the merged city, distinct from the constituent city with the same kanji name.
List of fully hiragana cities and towns Romaji Hiragana Kanji PrefectureAmaAichi Awara Fukui Ebino Miyazaki Erimo Hokkaidō Hitachinaka Ibaraki Inabe Mie Ino Kōchi Isumi Chiba Iwaki Fukushima Kahoku Ishikawa Kasumigaura Ibaraki Katsuragi Wakayama Mannō Kagawa Midori Gunma Minabe Wakayama Minakami Gunma Miyama FukuokaMiyoshiAichi Mukawa Hokkaidō Mutsu Aomori Nikaho Akita Oirase Aomori Ōi Fukui Saitama Saitama Sakura Tochigi Sanuki Kagawa Setana Hokkaidō Susami Wakayama Tatsuno Hyōgo Tokigawa Saitama Tsugaru Aomori Tsukuba Ibaraki Tsukubamirai Ibaraki Tsurugi Tokushima Ukiha Fukuoka Uruma Okinawa
List of partially Hiragana cities City / Town Hiragana + Kanji Full kanji Prefecture Akiruno Tokyo Ichikikushikino Kagoshima Higashikagawa Kagawa Higashimiyoshi Tokushima Kinokawa Wakayama Minamiawaji Hyōgo Izunokuni Shizuoka Fujimino Saitama
List of Katakana cities Romanized /in English Katakana + Kanji Prefecture Remarks Niseko Hokkaidō from Ainu Minami-Alps Yamanashi from the eponymous Akaishi Mountains (赤石山脈), also known as 南アルプス (Southern Alps) in Japanese Yūkarigaoka Chiba from "eucalyptus hill", even though Australian eucalyptus trees do not occur in the area naturally.
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