sato / mura - village

I once again stumbled on two word with the same translation.

Sato as in Hida no Sato (Hida Folk Village =open air museum in Takayama) and
Mura as in Shikoku Mura (Shikoku Village = open air museum in Takamatsu).

Both are used for exactly the same reasoning here.
Can you tell me other examples where one only can use Mura or Sato?

Thanks

"mura" is simply "village" and is also used as the smallest (or almost the smallest) municipal unit. So you might see some street addresses with "-mura" at the end.

"sato" is more like "home of.." in the sense of "where you belong," as in a combined word of "furusato," hometown, with a bit of sentiment added to it.

So either was fine for the two names you mentioned, but you will not see any street addresses with "-sato" on it, I'd say :)

A liitle trivia.
Have you heard of "郷に入っては郷に従う" Go ni
haittewa Go ni shitagau, which is the same proverb as "When in Rome, do as Romans do" in Japanese.
In Nara period(~700AD)the lowest Japanese governing unit under Gun was Sato which comprised of 50 houses w/ a leader but later changed to Go. Go had a few Satos under for a while but Sato was eliminated later. Later Mura (a few houses) was introduced under Go. Shirakawa-Go is an example.
Now the order is Shi, Cho, Son (City, Town, Village).
Go, Sato or Mura is used nowadays for nostalgically old places or for the tourism.

Thanks to both of you.

I never thought there would be such a 'big' diffrence between them.
Thanks for telling me!

I think thats one of the thing that a western person would never notice if it wasn't explained to them. Thanks AK.

Thanks for the historcial background on this as well, ay!!!

I think you can say that "sato" has a similar quality to the English word "countryside" or even "country" in the sense of Kawabata's "The Snow Country" or Bob Dylan's "Girl from the North Country."

"Sato" is an older way of refering to "village" or "home." Just several decades ago, the home a wife grew up before she got married and started living with her husband's family was called "sato." Nowadays we call it "jikka."

Meanwhile, I'm sure you know that "kuni" means "nation," but it also means "hometown" especially hometown in the countryside.

Back in the 19th century when very few people ever thought about living outside Japan, each hometown was technically "kuni." I'm reading a novel written in 1914 (Kokoro) and a character calls herself "ainoko (half-bread)" because each of her parents are from slightly different parts of Japan.

So in the days when most people lived in the countryside, and came to the city only for schooling or work, "sato" was automatically the place you rest and nest. And even today, when people hear the word "sato" as opposed to "mura" or what not, they tend to think of comfort, family and home rather than a small municipal divided by boarders.

おまけ(omake, freebie, gratis)
Go 郷　is also read as kyo and when combined with ko(故)it becomes kokyo 故郷. This is also read as furusato ふるさと, which is also written 古里　or 故里.
There is a beautiful old children's folk song about furusato 故郷.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcmcXrCihrA