In recent years, place name studies have not only focused on the origin and etymology of the names but also on using them as part of the process of forming a place. This trend, formalized as “critical toponymies,” has brought about a shift in research perspectives in place name studies and has broadened the scope of place name analysis. At the same time, however, the problem remains that place names are analyzed only in terms of their specific meanings according to the purpose of each research project, and there is a lack of analysis of the place names themselves. A comprehensive viewpoint that captures the meanings of place names from multiple perspectives is needed. Aiming for further development of toponymy, this paper considers place names as objects with various meanings recognized by different entities and discusses the functions of place names as a whole set of such meanings. Specifically, this paper focuses on community activities in Senri New Town, Osaka prefecture, and shows that the name “Senri” is perceived as polysemous and ambiguous, and that this ambiguity serves to bridge and unite the gaps in orientation toward activities among the various entities. Furthermore, for many informants, this function of unity was seen as something that could not be replaced by other similar place names, such as “Senri New Town,” and was identified as a unique characteristic of the place name resulting from the combination of various meanings. This ambiguity and the function served by it should be fully considered in the process of standardization of geographical names.

Before World War II, Tokutaro Kitamura, an engineer in the Ministry of Home Affairs, was a pioneer in the discipline of open-space planning as well as a leading figure in open-space administration in Japan. During wartime, he became one of the representative Japanese national land planners. Kitamura, who had mastered Nazi German national land planning theory during the war, contrived a settlement organization theory such that central settlements were hierarchically arranged as the neighborhood center (the lowest order), the rural center, the town and small city, the middle city, and the large city (the highest order). This was a modified version of the above-mentioned German planning theory that had been adjusted to Japanese settlements. Kitamura considered applying his theory to the establishment of new municipalities reorganized by the Showa Municipal Merger policy started in 1953.

In the process of brushing up his theory, Kitamura read The New Regional Pattern: Industries and Gardens, Workshops and Farms (1949), written by Ludwig Hilberseimer, a German-American architect and urban planner, and found that Christaller’s (1933) central place theory introduced in that text was likely related to Nazi German national land planning theory. This was a result of his speculation that the nesting structure consisting of multiple hierarchies of central settlements’ circular spheres of influence, which is discussed in Nazi German national land planning theory, is topologically similar to that of central places’ hexagonal market areas in Christaller’s theory. Before becoming involved in national land planning, Kitamura had conducted research on the park location problem and proposed a plan in which attraction areas of parks of various sizes were nested; he was thus acquainted with the nesting structure.

Moreover, what convinced Kitamura that the theoretical basis of settlement location theory in Nazi German national land planning theory consisted in central place theory was a paper briefly explaining the latter written by Shigeki Muramatsu, who specialized in settlement geography; that paper was published in Toshi-Mondai Kenkyu (Journal of Municipal Problems), Vol. 8, No. 3 (1956). By reading Muramatsu’s paper, Kitamura understood the essence of central place theory, which he could not completely understand from Hilberseimer’s book (1949).

Although Kitamura had no involvement with geography, his papers on national land planning confirm that he made significant contributions to urban geography and central place studies in Japan for the following reasons. First, Christaller’s (1933) hexagonal diagram was originally illustrated in Japan in Kitamura’s paper published in Shisei (Municipal Government), Vol. 5, No. 4 (1956). Second, another of his papers, published in Toshi Koron (Municipal Review), Vol. 19, No. 8 (1936) was the first to use the rank-size curve of population for the problem of city size distribution in Japan. Third, judging from Christaller’s (1933) quote in the book by Hilberseimer (1949), who had fled Germany to the USA in 1938, Kitamura (1956) showed that central place theory might have already been popular among German architects and urban planners before World War II.