A town (町; ''chō'' or ''machi'') is a
local administrative unit in
Japan. It is a local public body along with
prefecture (''ken'' or other equivalents),
city (''shi''), and
village (''mura''). Geographically, a town is contained within a
district
A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or county, counties, several municipality, municipa ...
.
Note that the same word (町; ''machi'' or ''chō'') is also used in names of smaller regions, usually a part of a
ward in a city. This is a legacy of when smaller towns were formed on the outskirts of a city, only to eventually merge into it.
Towns
See also
*
Municipalities of Japan
Japan has three levels of governments: national, prefectural, and municipal. The nation is divided into 47 prefectures. Each prefecture consists of numerous municipalities, with 1,719 in total (January 2013 figures There are four types of munic ...
*
Japanese addressing system
The Japanese addressing system is used to identify a specific location in Japan. When written in Japanese characters, addresses start with the largest geographical entity and proceed to the most specific one. When written in Latin alphabet, Lati ...
References
{{reflist
External links
"Large City System of Japan"; graphic shows towns compared with other Japanese city types at p. 1 DF 7 of 40">"Large City System of Japan"; graphic shows towns compared with other Japanese city types at p. 1 [PDF 7 of 40
/nowiki>
Towns in Japan">*