Meaning of noun + を挙げて

Question

In Last Period: Owarinaki Rasen no Monogatari a village chief is imposing retirement on a male guide which relaunched turism in the realm, and he wants to made a group of beautiful girl guides; at one point, there is this sentence:

市を挙げて観光案内美少女グループを結成する

I can't find this construction on my grammars, but from what I was able to gather it means something like "-wide; As a whole; En masse"; I can't really understand it, though: what should it mean? That the whole city is creating that group guide? That group guide will cover the whole city? Something else?

Answer 1

I would say it is an odd usage of the following sense of あげる

7 ㋒（挙げる）事を起こす。「兵を―・げる」

It means to move/deploy (soldiers), and a more common use (in an extended sense) would be

• 奥州市は市を挙げて大谷翔平を応援している
• Oshu city as a whole supports Shohei Otani.

The basic meaning is, as you mentioned, en masse/as a whole and implies the organizational movement.

Another example:

• 会社を挙げて新製品の開発に取り組む
• The whole company works on developing a new product.

As for the sentence in question, 市を挙げて modifies 結成する - so it means the city as a whole creates the sight-seeing-guide-girls-group (probably as a part of strategy of promoting the city).

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As pointed out in the comment,

6 ㋒（挙げる）力などを出し尽くす。「全力を―・げる」「町を―・げて応援する」

This seems to be the definition intended for the usage. I feel -wide is closer to the usage (市を挙げて does not sound like 市 trying hard), but at least it explains why I feel odd about 市を挙げて・・・結成する. Creating a group is not something one (or me at least) imagines requires to exhaust energy to accomplish. So collocation-wise, the sentence in question is not too idiomatic.

Answer 2

I'm not sure why デジタル大辞泉 doesn't have it but スーパー大辞林 has this definition:

⑲ （「…をあげて」の形で）構成メンバーがそろって…するさまを表す。《挙》「国を―・げて歓迎する」「世を―・げて」

There's nothing odd about it. I believe 舉國 in Chinese has a similar meaning, too.