was a district in

Hyōgo Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Hyōgo Prefecture has a population of 5,469,762 () and a geographic area of . Hyōgo Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture to the east, Osaka Prefecture to th ...

. It was formed in 1879 from the territory of the

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

Akashi Domain. The district ceased to exist on 10 January 1951, when its last remaining municipalities merged into Akashi city. The area that the district once covered is now within Akashi city and western

Kobe Kobe ( ; , ), officially , is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. With a population of around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's List of Japanese cities by population, seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Port of Toky ...

city.

History

At the beginning of the

Meiji era The was an Japanese era name, era of History of Japan, Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feu ...

, the Akashi Domain consisted of the town of Akashi and 144 villages. In July 1871 the feudal system of domains and provinces was abolished and Akashi Domain became Akashi Prefecture. In November of the same year Akashi Prefecture merged into Himeji Prefecture, and a few days later it changed its name into Shikama Prefecture. In August 1876 Shikama merged into Hyogo Prefecture. On 8 January 1879 the national law on districts, wards, towns and villages was put into effect in Hyogo Prefecture and the district of Akashi was formed. The district's administration was located in Akashi town. When a new law on towns and villages came into effect in April 1889, the towns and villages of Akashi District underwent various mergers to form the following twelve towns and villages: * Akashi town * Hasetani village * Hayashizaki village * Hirano village * Ikawadani village * Iwaoka village * Kande village * Ōkubo village * Oshibedani village * Tamatsu village * Tarumi village * Uozumi village On 1 November 1919 Akashi town gained city status and broke away from the district, leaving the eleven villages. In the 1920s a series of changes to laws on local government saw districts in Japan lose their administrative powers, first by the dissolution of district councils in 1923, then the dissolution of district offices in 1926. At this time, districts remained only as a geographical area that was mainly used in the addressing of mail sent to towns and villages. In November 1928 Tarumi gained status as a town, followed by Ōkubo in April 1938. In July 1941 Tarumi merged into Kobe city, and Hayashizaki merged into Akashi in February 1942. In 1943 Tamatsu and Akashi submitted an application for a merger, but it was rejected. Instead, in March 1947 Tamatsu and six other villages (Hasetani, Hirano, Ikawadani, Kande and Oshibedani) merged into Kobe. On 10 January 1951, Ōkubo and Uozumi merged into Akashi city and the district ceased to exist, with all of its former towns and villages now within the cities Akashi and Kobe.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Akashi District, Hyogo Former districts of Hyōgo Prefecture