270px, Dangyokei Gorge is a

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

located in Ōchi District, Shimane Prefecture, Japan. , the town had an estimated

population Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a ...

of 9,838 in 4712 households and a

population density Population density (in agriculture: Stock (disambiguation), standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geographical ...

of 23 persons per km². The total area of the town is .

Geography

Ōnan is located in west-central Shimane, in the Chugoku Mountains bordered by Hiroshima Prefecture to the south.

Neighboring municipalities

Shimane Prefecture *

Hamada A hamada ( ar, حمادة, ) is a type of desert landscape consisting of high, largely barren, hard rocky plateaus, where most of the sand has been removed by deflation. The majority of the Sahara is in fact hamada. Other examples are Negev dese ...

* Gōtsu * Kawamoto * Misato Hiroshima Prefecture * Miyoshi * Akitakata * Kitahiroshima

Climate

Ōnan has a humid subtropical climate (

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, notabl ...

''Cfa'') with very warm summers and cool winters. Precipitation is abundant throughout the year. The average annual temperature in Ōnan is . The average annual rainfall is with July as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in August, at around , and lowest in January, at around . The highest temperature ever recorded in Ōnan was on 8 August 1994; the coldest temperature ever recorded was on 28 February 1981.

Demographics

Per Japanese census data, the population of Ōnan in 2020 was 10,163 people. Ōnan has been conducting censuses since 1960.

History

The area of Ōnan was part of ancient

Iwami Province was an old province of Japan in the area that is today the western part of Shimane Prefecture. It was sometimes called . Iwami bordered Aki, Bingo, Izumo, Nagato, and Suō provinces. In the Heian period (794–1192) the capital was at moder ...

. During the

Edo Period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characte ...

, the area was divided between of the holdings of

Hamada Domain The was a Japanese domain of the Edo period. It was associated with Iwami Province in modern-day Shimane Prefecture.Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...

. After the

Meiji restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ...

, villages were established within

Ōchi District, Shimane is a district located in Shimane Prefecture, Japan. As of 2003, the district has an estimated population of 27,648 and a density Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the substance's mass per unit of volume. The symbol m ...

on April 1, 1889 with the creation of the modern municipalities system. The town of Ōnan was formed on October 1, 2004, from the merger of the towns of Iwami,

Mizuho Mizuho () literally means "abundant rice" in Japanese and "harvest" in the figurative sense. It was also an ancient name of Japan. It might refer to: Places * Mizuho, Gifu, a city in Gifu * Mizuho, Tokyo, a town in Tokyo * Mizuho Plateau in A ...

, and the village of Hasumi.

Government

Ōnan has a mayor-council form of government with a directly elected mayor and a

unicameral Unicameralism (from ''uni''- "one" + Latin ''camera'' "chamber") is a type of legislature, which consists of one house or assembly, that legislates and votes as one. Unicameral legislatures exist when there is no widely perceived need for multi ...

town council of 13 members. Ōnan, collectively with the towns of Kawamoto and Misato, contributes one member to the Shimane Prefectural Assembly. In terms of national politics, the town is part of the Shimane 2nd district of the lower house of the Diet of Japan.

Economy

Ōnan is a very rural area, with an economy based on agriculture and forestry.

Education

Ōnan has eight public elementary school and three public junior high schools operated by the town government, and one public high school operated by the Shimane Prefectural Board of Education.

Transportation

Railway

Following the closure of the

JR West , also referred to as , is one of the Japan Railways Group (JR Group) companies and operates in western Honshu. It has its headquarters in Kita-ku, Osaka. It is listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange, is a constituent of the TOPIX Large70 index, an ...

Sankō Line The is a former railway line and current bus line in western Japan operated by the West Japan Railway Company (JR West). The 108.1 km (67.2 mi) line connected in Shimane Prefecture to in Hiroshima Prefecture and featured 30 tunnels. ...

on April 1, 2018, Ōnan no longer has any passenger railway service. The nearest train station is Gōtsu Station on the

San'in Main Line The is a railway line in western Japan, which connects Kyoto and Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi, operated by West Japan Railway Company (JR West). It is the major railway line of the San'in region, approximately paralleling the Japan Sea, crossing Kyot ...

* '' - < > - - - ''

Highways

Hamada Expressway *

Notable people from Ōnan

* Tetsuo Saito, politician

References

External links

*
Ohnan official website

Report on Town Statistical Depiction
(Japanese) Towns in Shimane Prefecture Ōnan, Shimane {{shimane-geo-stub