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.
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
List of villages in Japan
List of cities in Japan
Japanese addressing system
References
External links
"Large City System of Japan"; graphic shows towns compared with other Japanese city types at p. 1 [PDF 7 of 40]