270px, Kotogahama beach is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...

located in Aki District, Kōchi Prefecture, Japan. , the village 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 3,636 in 1767 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 92 persons per km².The total area of the village is .

Geography

Geisei is located in southeastern Kōchi Prefecture on the island of

Shikoku is the smallest of the four main islands of Japan. It is long and between wide. It has a population of 3.8 million (, 3.1%). It is south of Honshu and northeast of Kyushu. Shikoku's ancient names include ''Iyo-no-futana-shima'' (), '' ...

. It is facing the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...

to the south and mountains in the north.

Neighbouring municipalities

Kōchi Prefecture * Aki * Kōnan

Climate

Geisei 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 hot summers and cool winters. Precipitation is high, but there is a pronounced difference between the wetter summers and drier winters.

Demographics

Per Japanese census data,Geisei population statistics
/ref> the population of Geisei has decreased steadily since the 1960s.

History

As with all of Kōchi Prefecture, the area of Geisei was part of ancient

Tosa Province was a province of Japan in the area of southern Shikoku. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Tosa''" in . Tosa bordered on Awa to the northeast, and Iyo to the northwest. Its abbreviated form name was . In terms of the Gokishichidō sys ...

. The name of Aki District appears in

Nara period The of the history of Japan covers the years from CE 710 to 794. Empress Genmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō (present-day Nara). Except for a five-year period (740–745), when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the c ...

records. 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 part of the holdings of

Tosa Domain The was a feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, controlling all of Tosa Province in what is now Kōchi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. It was centered around Kōchi Castle, and was ruled throughout its history by ...

ruled by the Yamauchi clan from their seat at Kōchi Castle. The villages of Wajiki (和食村), Umanoue (馬ノ上村) and Nishibun (西分村) were established with the creation of the modern municipalities system on October 1, 1889. The three villages merged on July 20, 1954 to form the village of Geisei.

Government

Geisei 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 ...

village council of five members. Geisei, , together with the other municipalities of Aki District, contributes one member to the Kōchi Prefectural Assembly. In terms of national politics, the village is part of Kōchi 1st district of the lower house of the Diet of Japan. Geisei's first mayor, Masao Okamura, served from 1946 as mayor of Nishibun to his retirement in 1996 for 50 years in the same post. He had been reelected 13 consecutive times, ten of which elections were unopposed.

Economy

The local economy is centered on horticulture and greenhouse farming, with

commercial fishing Commercial fishing is the activity of catching fish and other seafood for commercial profit, mostly from wild fisheries. It provides a large quantity of food to many countries around the world, but those who practice it as an industry must often ...

and forestry playing a smaller roles.

Education

Geisei has one public elementary school and one public middle schools operated by the village government. The village does not have a high school.

Transportation

Railway

Tosa Kuroshio Railway The is a third-sector railway company in Kōchi Prefecture, Japan. The name comes from the former Tosa Province and the Kuroshio Current. The company was founded in 1986, and operates three lines: a former Japanese National Railways (JNR) line ...

- Asa Line * -

Highways

References

External links

* * Villages in Kōchi Prefecture Populated coastal places in Japan {{Kochi-geo-stub