270px, Amagasaki Castle 270px, Aerial view of Amagasaki city center 270px, Amagasaki Station is an industrial

city A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

located in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. , the city 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 455,555 in 223812 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 9000 persons per km². The total area of the city is .

Geography

Amagasaki is located in far southeastern Hyōgo Prefecture, next to

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of ...

. It has the fourth largest population in Hyōgo Prefecture after Kobe,

Himeji 260px, Himeji City Hall is a city located in Hyōgo Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 525,682 in 227,099 households and a population density of 980 persons per km². The total area of the city is ...

, and Nishinomiya. Residential areas account for most of the rest of the coastal areas, industrial areas along the Meishin Expressway and JR West Fukuchiyama Line, commercial areas around Hanshin Amagasaki Station and JR JR Amagasaki Station, and its population density is the highest among municipalities in Hyogo Prefecture. Ground subsidence caused by the pumping up of groundwater by factories has reduced one-third of the city's area to sea level, causing flooding damage due to storm surges.

Neighboring municipalities

Hyōgo Prefecture * Itami * Nishinomiya Osaka Prefecture *

( Nishiyodogawa-ku,

Yodogawa-ku is one of 24 wards of Osaka, Japan. It is located in the north of the city. Economy Nissin Foods has its corporate headquarters in Yodogawa-ku. The company moved to its current headquarters in 1977, when the construction of the building was com ...

) * Toyonaka

Climate

Amagasaki has a Humid subtropical climate (Köppen ''Cfa'') characterized by warm summers and cool winters with light snowfall. The average annual temperature in Amagasaki is 15.0 °C. The average annual rainfall is 1475 mm with September as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in January, at around 26.9 °C, and lowest in January, at around 3.7 °C.

Demographics

Per Japanese census data, the population of Amagasaki peaked around 1970s has been decreasing steadily since .

History

The area of Amagasaki was part of ancient Kawabe District of Settsu Province and has been inhabited since ancient times, with the traces of Yayoi period settlementsand many kofun

burial mound Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objec ...

s found within the city limits. From the

Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japanese ...

, the area was known for its port of Daimotsuura. 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 ...

, Amagasaki prospered as the

castle town A castle town is a settlement built adjacent to or surrounding a castle. Castle towns were common in Medieval Europe. Some examples include small towns like Alnwick and Arundel, which are still dominated by their castles. In Western Europe, a ...

of Amagasaki Domain undertake Aoayama and subsequently the

Matsudaira clan The was a Japanese samurai clan that descended from the Minamoto clan. It originated in and took its name from Matsudaira village, in Mikawa Province (modern-day Aichi Prefecture). During the Sengoku period, the chieftain of the main line of t ...

s. The town of Amagasaki was established on April 1, 1889 with the creation of the modern municipalities system. It was elevated to city status on October 1, 1916. The

1934 Muroto typhoon In September 1934, a violent typhoon caused tremendous devastation in Japan, leaving more than 3,000 people dead in its wake. Dubbed the , the system was first identified on September 13 over the western Federated States of Microne ...

caused 145 fatalities and much of the city was destroyed by air raids on June 1 and June 15, 1945 during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. The 1995

Great Hanshin earthquake The , or Kobe earthquake, occurred on January 17, 1995, at 05:46:53 JST (January 16 at 20:46:53 UTC) in the southern part of Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, including the region known as Hanshin. It measured 6.9 on the moment magnitude scale and ha ...

also caused considerable damage and 49 fatalities. Amagasaki was designated a special city on April 1, 2001 with increased local autonomy. A commuter train derailed on the Fukuchiyama Line near Amagasaki on April 25, 2005, resulting in more than 100 dead and 550 injured. On April 1, 2009, Amagasaki was elevated to the status of a

core city In urban planning, a core city, principal city metropolitan core, or central city, is the largest or most important city or cities of a metropolitan area. A core city is surrounded by smaller satellite cities, towns, and suburbs. A central city ...

Government

Amagasaki 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 ...

city council of 42 members. Amagasaki contributes seven members to the Hyōgo Prefectural Assembly. In terms of national politics, the city is in the Hyōgo 8th district of the lower house of the Diet of Japan.

Politics of Amagasaki

* 2002 Amagasaki mayoral election On 22 November 2010 Kazumi Inamura became the first popularly elected Greens Japan Mayor as well as the youngest popularly-elected female mayor of the city with 54% of the vote.

Economy

Amagasaki is a major part of the

Hanshin Industrial Region The is one of the largest industrial regions in Japan. Its name comes from the ''on''-reading of the kanji used to abbreviate the names of Osaka (大阪) and Kobe (神戸), the two largest cities in the megalopolis. The GDP of this area (Osaka ...

. Businesses headquartered in the city include manufacturers such as Osaka Titanium Technologies. The value of manufactured goods shipments in Amagasaki was 1,288 billion yen in 2004.

Education

Amagasaki has 42 public elementary schools and 17 public middle schools operated by the city government, 11 public high schools operated by the Hyōgo Prefectural Board of Education, and two combined private middle/high schools. In addition, the city also operates one special education school for the handicapped. The College of Industrial Technology, a junior college, and the Sonoda Women's University, a women's four-year college with associated junior college are located in the city The city has a North Korean school, .() It previously had a second school, .

Transportation

Railways

JR West -

Tōkaidō Main Line The is a major Japanese railway line of the Japan Railways Group (JR Group) network, connecting and stations. It is long, not counting its many freight feeder lines around the major cities. The high-speed Tōkaidō Shinkansen largely parallel ...

(

JR Kobe Line The is the nickname of portions of the Tokaido Main Line and the Sanyo Main Line, between Osaka Station in Osaka, Osaka Prefecture and Himeji Station in Himeji, Hyōgo Prefecture. The line, along with the JR Kyoto Line and the Biwako Line, ...

) * -

JR West - Fukuchiyama Line (

JR Takarazuka Line The is a railway line operated by West Japan Railway Company (JR West) connecting Osaka and Fukuchiyama, Japan. Within JR West's "Urban Network" covering the Osaka–Kobe–Kyoto metropolitan region, the line from Osaka to Sasayamaguchi is also ...

) * - -

JR West - JR Tōzai Line * - - Hankyu Railway Logo

Hankyu - Kobe Line * - - Hankyu Railway Logo

Hankyu - Itami Line *

Hanshin Electric Railway is a Japanese private railway company of Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group that links Osaka and Kobe. It also owns the Hanshin Tigers baseball team. The first character for Kobe (神戸) and the second character for Osaka (大阪) combine to form the ...

Hanshin Main Line {{BS-map , title=Route map , title-bg=orangered , title-color=white , collapsible=yes , collapse=yes , map= {{BS, , , Lines are of Hanshin unless noted, } {{BS5, , hBHF, , , tBHF, , , {{STN, Osaka/{{STN, Kitashinchi} {{BS5, , hSTR, exKBHFa, tKACC ...

* - - - - -

- Hanshin Namba Line * -

Highways

Meishin Expressway * Hanshin_Urban_Expwy_Sign_0003

Hanshin Expressway Kobe Route * Hanshin_Urban_Expwy_Sign_0005

Hanshin Expressway

Bayshore Route (Port of Osaka-Kobe) The , signed as Route 5, is one of the routes of the Hanshin Expressway system serving the Keihanshin area. It is an intercity route that travels in an east to west direction from Suminoe-ku, Osaka to Tarumi-ku, Kobe. It has a total length of . ...

* * *

Sister city relations

Augsburg Augsburg (; bar , Augschburg , links=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German , label=Swabian German, , ) is a city in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, around west of Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and regional seat of the ...

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

, Germany - since April 7, 1959 *

Anshan Anshan () is an inland prefecture-level city in central-southeast Liaoning province, People's Republic of China, about south of the provincial capital Shenyang. As of the 2020 census, it was Liaoning's third most populous city with a population ...

, Liaoning, China - since February 2, 1983 (friendship city) *

Kami are the deities, divinities, spirits, phenomena or "holy powers", that are venerated in the Shinto religion. They can be elements of the landscape, forces of nature, or beings and the qualities that these beings express; they can also be the sp ...

, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan (Formerly Mikata) - since 1974 (friendship city)

Local attractions

* Tano Site, Yayoi period settlement trace, National Historic Site * Amagasaki Castle

Notable people from Amagasaki

* Mitsue Aoki ( manga artist) *

Chikamatsu Monzaemon was a Japanese dramatist of jōruri, the form of puppet theater that later came to be known as bunraku, and the live-actor drama, kabuki. The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' has written that he is "widely regarded as the greatest Japanese dramatis ...

(

dramatist A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...

of the

) * Chiyu (bassist of the band Sug) * Cobra (punk rock band) * Downtown (comedy duo) **

Hitoshi Matsumoto , commonly known as , is a Japanese film director and one of Japan's most popular comedians and TV hosts. He is one half of the comedy duo Downtown alongside Masatoshi Hamada. Like Hamada, Matsumoto was born and raised in Amagasaki, Hyōgo Prefect ...

** Masatoshi Hamada (Originally from Naniwa-ku, Osaka) * Gero (singer) *

Heath A heath () is a shrubland habitat found mainly on free-draining infertile, acidic soils and characterised by open, low-growing woody vegetation. Moorland is generally related to high-ground heaths with—especially in Great Britain—a cooler a ...

(bassist of the band

X Japan was a Japanese rock band from Chiba, formed in 1982 by drummer and pianist Yoshiki and lead vocalist Toshi. Starting as a predominantly power/speed metal band with heavy symphonic elements, they later gravitated towards a progressive soun ...

) * Kunio Hiramatsu (politician) *

Kojin Karatani is a Japanese philosopher and literary critic. Biography Karatani entered the University of Tokyo in 1960, where he joined the radical Marxist Communist League, better known as "The Bund," and participated in the massive 1960 Anpo protests aga ...

(philosopher) * Toshiki Kashu (actor) * Ryuto Kazuhara (vocalist of boy band

Generations from Exile Tribe Generations from Exile Tribe (Japanese: ジェネレーションズ・フロム・エグザイル・トライブ, stylized as GENERATIONS from EXILE TRIBE and formerly known as Generations) is a seven-member Japanese dance and vocal group formed ...

) * Keichū ( Kokugaku scholar from the

) * Yoshitada Konoike (politician) * Maggy (fashion model) * Ryo Matsuda (actor) * Shōta Matsushima (actor) *

Kaho Minami is a Japanese actress of Korean descent active in film, television and commercials. Life and career Kaho Minami was born on January 20, 1964, in Amagasaki in Hyogo, Japan, and is of third-generation Korean descent. She graduated from Toho Ga ...

(actress) *

Akihiro Murata is a Japanese professional shogi player ranked 6-dan. Early life Murata was born on July 14, 1986, in Uozu, Toyama. He learned how to play shogi when he was about five years old from his father. In 1998, Murata took the entrance exam for the J ...

( shogi player) - Originally from Uozu, Toyama * Nagisa (comedian of comedy duo Amako Inter) * Ramo Nakajima (novelist) *

Ai Okawa , born July 17, 1993) is a Japanese idol, fashion model, actress and a former member of female idol group Idoling!!!. Life and career Ai Okawa was born on July 17, 1993, in Amagasaki, Hyogo 270px, Amagasaki Castle 270px, Aerial view of Amaga ...

(fashion model, former idol from

Idoling!!! was a Japanese TV show with attached female idol group created by Fuji TV. The concept of the group was to watch as the girls grow as idols and experience various things. Idoling's main source of exposure was their TV show, which aired several ...

) * Kazuo Shiraga (modern artist) * Keiko Tobe (manga artist) * Rena Uehara (singer) - Born in Amagasaki, based in

* Yu Yagami (manga artist) * Seiichi Yamamoto (musician) - Born in Amagasaki, based in

* Kinuyo Yamashita (video game music composer) * Shota Yasuda (guitarist of boy band

Kanjani Eight is a five-member Japanese boy band from Japan's Kansai region. They are managed by the multimedia talent agency Johnny & Associates and signed to Infinity Records. The group was formed in 2002 and made their CD debut in 2004 as "Johnny's modern ...

) *

Ai Yazawa is a Japanese manga author. While most of Yazawa's manga is published in Japan by Shueisha, publishers of '' Ribon'' and ''Cookie'' (''Nana'' was serialized in the latter), series like ''Paradise Kiss'' have appeared in non-Shueisha magazines s ...

(manga artist)

Athletes

Ritsu Doan Ritsu may refer to: * Vinaya, the Japanese term for the Buddhist regulatory framework * Risshū (Buddhism), a name of a Japanese school of Buddhism strictly following this framework * the historical Japanese term for a criminal code as part of the ...

( football player) *

Yutaka Enatsu is a former Japanese pitcher regarded as one of the best Japanese strikeout pitchers of all-time. In , he recorded 401 strikeouts, which is still the world record. Enatsu was a bit player in the Black Mist Scandal which embroiled Japanese baseb ...

(

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

player) - Originally from Nara Prefecture * Megu Hirose (

softball Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...

player) * Daisuke Hosokawa ( swimmer) * Takahiro Ikeyama (

player) *

Hideki Irabu was a Japanese professional baseball player of American and Japanese mixed ancestry. He played professionally in both Japan and the United States. Irabu played for the Lotte Orions / Chiba Lotte Marines and Hanshin Tigers of Nippon Professiona ...

(former baseball player) - Originally from

Hirara, Okinawa , ( Miyako: ''Pїsara'') was a city located in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan on the island of Miyako. As of 2003, the city had an estimated population of 33,861 and a density of 521.58 persons per km². The total area was 64.92 km². History H ...

(currently Miyakojima, Okinawa) * Norihito Kaneto (baseball player) *

Ayumi Karino (born 6 November 1984 in Hyogo Prefecture) is a Japanese softball player who won the gold medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXIX Olympiad () and also known as Beijing 2008 (), we ...

(softball player) * Kamui Kobayashi (

auto racing Auto racing (also known as car racing, motor racing, or automobile racing) is a motorsport involving the racing of automobiles for competition. Auto racing has existed since the invention of the automobile. Races of various sorts were organise ...

driver) * Naoki Miyanishi (baseball player) - Originally from Nishinomiya, Hyogo * Minoru Murayama (former baseball player) - Originally from

Kita-ku, Kobe is one of 9 wards of Kobe, Japan. It has an area of 241.84 km², and a population of 226,402 (2008). ''Kita'' in Japanese means North. Kita-ku is the biggest ward which occupies the northeastern part of the city. Arima Onsen is an onsen, o ...

* Takahiko Nomaguchi (baseball player) * Kengo Nomoto (

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

player) *

Daisuke Oku was a Japanese football player. He played for Japan national team. Club career Oku was born in Amagasaki on February 7, 1976. After graduating from high school, he joined Júbilo Iwata in 1994. He debuted in 1996. He became a regular player fro ...

( football player) * Hiroaki Saiuchi (baseball player) * Tochinowaka Michihiro (former sumo wrestler) *

Andy Wu is a Japanese professional wrestler better known by his ring name who worked for Wrestle-1 until its closure in 2020. He is currently a freelancer. Professional wrestling career All Japan Pro Wrestling (2012–2013) Andy Wu debuted for All Ja ...

( professional wrestler)

References

External links

*
Amagasaki City official website
English machine translation is available on the site. {{Authority control Cities in Hyōgo Prefecture Port settlements in Japan Populated coastal places in Japan