Geography

The Naruto series is set on a fictional continent that is divided into a number of different countries.

Countries
Countries operate as separate political entities and are presumably all monarchies, rules by daimyo who stand equally in rank with the Hidden Villages' Kage. The Naruto world is similar to feudal Japan in many aspects; those countries maintain balance between themselves through nothing but power. Treaties are periodically signed, but they are generally not even worth the paper they are written on.

Hidden Villages
Hidden Villages are parts of countries in which the country's ninja reside. Their leaders stand equally with the landlords ruling the countries they are a part of. A Hidden Village maintains its economy by training its citizens to be ninja from a young age and using them as manpower in various missions others would be willing to pay for, from weeding a garden for a single payment to receiving a constant budget from the country it resides in for being soldiers in case the country is involved in a war.