List of villages in Japan
Mura or Son (both jap村, dt "village" ) is a municipal administrative unit in Japan. Villages with the official designation Mura are usually smaller communities in rural Japan ( cf. rural community ). You always belong to a county gun. The official English translation of this local unit (essential for transcribing place names ) is village.
Through mergers of many communities in recent years their number has declined sharply, from 568 at the beginning of the Heisei - territorial reform ( Heisei Daigappei ) in April 1999 to 187 on March 8, 2010.
Therefore, the following prefectures have no mura:
- Ehime Prefecture
- Fukui Prefecture
- Hyōgo Prefecture
- Hiroshima Prefecture
- Ishikawa Prefecture
- Kagawa Prefecture
- Mie Prefecture
- Nagasaki Prefecture
- Saga Prefecture
- Shiga Prefecture
- Shizuoka Prefecture
- Tochigi Prefecture
- Yamaguchi Prefecture
Or only one:
- Kanagawa Prefecture ( Kiyokawa, Aiko -gun )
- Kyoto Prefecture ( Minamiyamashiro, Soraku -gun )
- Miyagi Prefecture ( Ohira, Kurokawa -gun )
- Oita Prefecture ( Himeshima, Higashikunisaki -gun )
- Prefecture Osaka ( Chihayaakasaka, Minamikawachi -gun )
- Saitama Prefecture ( Higashichichibu, Chichibu -gun )
- Shimane Prefecture ( Chibu, Oki -gun )
- Tokushima Prefecture ( Sanagouchi, Myodo -gun )
- Tottori Prefecture ( For this purpose, Saihaku -gun )
- Toyama Prefecture ( Funahashi, Nakaniikawa -gun )
- Wakayama Prefecture ( Kitayama, Higashimuro -gun )
(As of 1 April 2008)
The Kun - reading Mura for the character is more common than the On- reading Son Son The term is currently used only in the prefectures of Miyazaki, Okayama, Okinawa, Tokushima and Tottori. All other prefectures use the reading Mura.
Due to the derivation of many Japanese surnames from place names to Mura found in many family names such as: Nakamura, Murayama, Nishimura, etc.