270px, Hashimoto city center in 2012 aerial photograph is a

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

Wakayama Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Wakayama Prefecture has a population of 944,320 () and has a geographic area of . Wakayama Prefecture borders Osaka Prefecture to the north, and Mie Prefecture and Nara Prefecture ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. , 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 61,063 in 27392 households and a

population density Population density (in agriculture: 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 term.Matt RosenberPopul ...

of 470 persons per km². The total area of the city is .

Geography

Hashimoto is located near the prefectural border at the northeastern end of Wakayama Prefecture, bordering

Kawachinagano is a city located in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 101,649 in 47493 households and a population density of 930 persons per km². The total area of the city is . Geography Kawachinagano is located in the sout ...

Osaka Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Osaka Prefecture has a population of 8,778,035 () and has a geographic area of . Osaka Prefecture borders Hyōgo Prefecture to the northwest, Kyoto Prefecture ...

to the north and Gojō in

Nara Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Nara Prefecture has a population of 1,321,805 and has a geographic area of . Nara Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture to the north, Osaka Prefecture to the northwest, Wakayama P ...

to the east. There are also a couple of small exclaves in the neighboring towns of

Katsuragi, Wakayama file:Katsuragi Town Hall 01.jpg, 260px, Katsuragi Town Hall is a List of towns in Japan, town located in Ito District, Wakayama, Ito District, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan. , the town had an estimated population of 16,170 in 7137 households and a po ...

, and

Kudoyama 270px, Jison-in temple is a town located in Ito District, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan. , the town had an estimated population of 3,996 in 1770 households and a population density of 91 persons per km². The total area of the town is . Geogra ...

. Because it is close to the plate boundary on the south coast of

Honshu , historically called , is the largest and most populous island of Japan. It is located south of Hokkaidō across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyūshū across the Kanmon Straits. The island separ ...

, the mountains near Hashimoto are steep; the city is located between the Kongō Mountains and Kisen Mountains in the north and the

Kii Mountains is a mountainous region covering most of the Kii Peninsula. They lie south of the Japan Median Tectonic Line (MTL) in Wakayama, Nara, and Mie prefectures. The mountains are arranged roughly northeast to southwest. History During the Heian peri ...

in the south. Hashimoto is on the middle of the

Kinokawa River The is a river in Nara Prefecture, Nara and Wakayama Prefecture in Japan. It is called in Nara. It is 136 km long and has a watershed of 1,660 km². The river flows from Mount Ōdaigahara to the west. It pours into Kii Channel at Waka ...

. In addition, Hashimoto City is located directly above the

Japan Median Tectonic Line , also Median Tectonic Line (MTL), is Japan's longest fault system. The MTL begins near Ibaraki Prefecture, where it connects with the Itoigawa-Shizuoka Tectonic Line (ISTL) and the Fossa Magna. It runs parallel to Japan's volcanic arc, passing ...

, which is a large fault that runs east to west in western Japan.

Neighboring municipalities

Wakayama Prefecture * Kudōyama * Katsuragi * Kōya Nara Prefecture * Gojō Osaka Prefecture *

Climate

Hashimoto has a

humid subtropical climate A humid subtropical climate is a zone of climate characterized by hot and humid summers, and cool to mild winters. These climates normally lie on the southeast side of all continents (except Antarctica), generally between latitudes 25° and 40° ...

(Köppen ''Cfa'') characterized by warm summers and cool winters with light to no snowfall. The average annual temperature in Hashimoto is 13.3 °C. The average annual rainfall is 1781 mm with September as the wettest month.

Demographics

Per Japanese census data,Hashimoto population statistics
/ref> the population of Hashimoto peaked at around the year 2000 and has declined slightly since.

History

The area of the modern city of Hashimoto was within ancient

Kii Province , or , was a province of Japan in the part of Honshū that is today Wakayama Prefecture, as well as the southern part of Mie Prefecture. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Kii''" in . Kii bordered Ise, Izumi, Kawachi, Shima, and Yamato Pro ...

, and artifacts from the

Jōmon period The is the time in Japanese history, traditionally dated between 6,000–300 BCE, during which Japan was inhabited by a diverse hunter-gatherer and early agriculturalist population united through a common Jōmon culture, which reached a c ...

indicate a long period of human occupancy. Located in the middle reaches of the Kinokawa River, it once prospered as a

post town A post town is a required part of all postal addresses in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and a basic unit of the postal delivery system.Royal Mail, ''Address Management Guide'', (2004) Including the correct post town in the address increases ...

for timber transportation and for pilgrims heading to

Mount Kōya is a large temple settlement in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan to the south of Osaka. In the strictest sense, ''Mount Kōya'' is the mountain name ( sangō) of Kongōbu-ji Temple, the ecclesiastical headquarters of the Kōyasan sect of Shingon Budd ...

. During the late

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 characteriz ...

and

Meiji period The is an era of 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 feudal society at risk of colonization ...

sericulture Sericulture, or silk farming, is the cultivation of silkworms to produce silk. Although there are several commercial species of silkworms, ''Bombyx mori'' (the caterpillar of the domestic silkmoth) is the most widely used and intensively studie ...

and silk textiles became an important part of the local economy, but they have now disappeared. The village of Hashimoto was established with the creation of the modern municipalities system on April 1, 1889, and was raised to town status on May 10, 1894. On January 1, 1955, Hashimoto merged with the neighboring villages of Kishikami, Yamada, Kimi, Suda, and Kamuro to form the city of Hashimoto. On March 1, 2006, the town of Kōyaguchi (from Ito District) was merged into Hashimoto.

Government

Hashimoto 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 multic ...

city council of eighteen members. Hashimoto contributes three members to the Wakayama Prefectural Assembly. In terms of national politics, the city is part of Wakayama 2nd district of the

lower house A lower house is one of two Debate chamber, chambers of a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the upper house. Despite its official position "below" the upper house, in many legislatures worldwide, the lower house has co ...

of the

Diet of Japan The is the national legislature of Japan. It is composed of a lower house, called the House of Representatives (, ''Shūgiin''), and an upper house, the House of Councillors (, '' Sangiin''). Both houses are directly elected under a paralle ...

Economy

The mainstay of the local economy is

horticulture Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...

, especially that of Japanese persimmons and Japanese pears, as well as the poultry industry. The area has traditionally been known for its

Japanese white crucian carp The Japanese white crucian carp, also known as Japanese carp, white crucian carp, or gengoro-buna (''Carassius cuvieri''), is a species of freshwater fish in the carp family (family Cyprinidae). It is found in Japan and, as an introduced species, ...

fish farms and its textiles. As the only city in Wakayama prefecture that is included in the Osaka metropolitan area (in terms of urban employment), there are an increasing number of commuters, gradually transforming the area into a

bedroom community A commuter town is a populated area that is primarily residential rather than commercial or industrial. Routine travel from home to work and back is called commuting, which is where the term comes from. A commuter town may be called by many o ...

Education

Hashimoto has fifteen public elementary schools and five public middle schools operated by the city government, in addition to two public high schools and two combined public middle/high schools operated by the Wakayama Prefectural Department of Education. The city also has one private middle school and one private high school. The city also has one private combined elementary/middle school and one private combined middle/high school.

Transportation

Railway

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, and ...

–

Wakayama Line The is a railway line that links Nara Prefecture to Wakayama Prefecture in Japan, operated by West Japan Railway Company (JR West). It connects Ōji Station on the Yamatoji Line to Wakayama Station on the Hanwa Line and Kisei Main Line, with t ...

* - - - - 18px

Nankai Electric Railway is a private railway in Japan, founded in 1884. The name ''Nankai'' (which means "South Sea") comes from the company's routes along the Nankaidō, the old highway that ran south from the old capital, Kyoto, along the sea coast. Nankai predates a ...

–

Nankai Kōya Line The is a railway line in Osaka Prefecture and Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, owned and operated by the Nankai Electric Railway, a private railway operator. It connects Osaka and Koyasan, the capital of the Japanese Buddhist sect Shingon, via the ...

* - - - - -

Highway

Keinawa Expressway The is a 104.9-km-long (65.2 mile) north–south (physically northeast–southwest) National Highway with access control (一般国道自動車専用道路 ''Ippan-kokudō jidōsha-sen-yō-dōro'') in the Kinki region of Japan that connects K ...

* * *

Notable people from Hashimoto

Masaru Furukawa was a Japanese people, Japanese swimming (sport), swimmer and Olympic champion. He competed at the 1956 Summer Olympics, 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, where he received a gold medal in the 200 m breaststroke swimming, breaststroke.

, swimmer *

Hideko Maehata was a Japanese breaststroke swimmer and the first Japanese woman to earn a gold medal in the Olympics. Maehata was born in Hashimoto, Wakayama, as the daughter of a tofu producer and as a child learned to swim in the Kinokawa River. In the fift ...

breaststroke Breaststroke is a swimming style in which the swimmer is on their chest and the torso does not rotate. It is the most popular recreational style due to the swimmer's head being out of the water a large portion of the time, and that it can be s ...

swimmer *

Junpei Mizobata is a Japanese actor, best known as Kudo Shinichi in '' Detective Conan: Kudo Shinichi e no Chousenjou'' and Saga Kazuma in ''Hanazakari no Kimitachi e''. He also appears in the drama '' Akai Ito'' as Atsushi Nishino (or Akkun). Personal life Jun ...

, actor *

Yoshitomo Tsutsugo is a Japanese professional baseball outfielder and first baseman in the Texas Rangers organization. He has played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Tampa Bay Rays, Los Angeles Dodgers and Pittsburgh Pirates and for the Yokohama BayStars/ ...

, baseball player

References

External links

Hashimoto City official website
Cities in Wakayama Prefecture {{Wakayama-geo-stub