A village (村, mura, sometimes son) is a local administrative unit in Japan.
It is a local public body along with prefecture (県, ken, or other equivalents), city (市, shi), and town (町, chō, sometimes machi). 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 (郡, gun), which are subdivided into towns and villages with no overlap and no uncovered area.
As a result of mergers, the number of villages in Japan is decreasing.
Currently 13 prefectures no longer have any villages: Tochigi (since March 20, 2006), Fukui (since March 3, 2006), Ishikawa (since March 1, 2005), Shizuoka (since July 1, 2005), Hyōgo (since April 1, 1999), Mie (since November 1, 2005), Shiga (since January 1, 2005), Hiroshima (since November 5, 2004), Yamaguchi (since March 20, 2006), Ehime (since January 16, 2005), Kagawa (since April 1, 1999), Nagasaki (since October 1, 2005), Saga (since March 20, 2006).
The six villages in the Northern Territories dispute are not including in the list below.