A village (村 mura or son) is a local administrative unit in Japan. It is a local public body along with prefecture (ken or other equivalents), city (shi), and town (cho). Geographically, a village's extent is contained within a prefecture.

It is larger than an actual settlement, being in actuality a subdivision of a rural district, districts are subdivided into towns and villages, with no overlap, and no uncovered area.

Prefectures without villages

• Hyōgo
• Hiroshima
• Kagawa
• Shiga (the village of Kutsuki merged with several other towns to form the new city of Takashima on January 1, 2005)
• Ehime (several recent mergers, the last of which was on January 16, 2005)
• Niigata (all remaining mura and machi merged into shi, the last of which was on March 30, 2006)

Prefectures with only one village

• Kanagawa (Kiyokawa, Aikō District)
• Kyōto (Minamiyamashiro, Soraku District)
• Ōsaka (Chihayaakasaka, Minamikawachi District)
• Tottori (Hiezu, Saihaku District)
• Nagasaki (Ōshima, Kitamatsuura District)

See also

• Municipalities of Japan
• Japanese addressing system
• Edo period village

Villages in Japan

村

Further reading

• Nicholas Klar "My Mother is a Tractor: A Life in Rural Japan"