was 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
Kaijō District,
Chiba Prefecture
is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Chiba Prefecture has a population of 6,278,060 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of . Chiba Prefecture borders Ibaraki Prefecture to the north, Saitama Prefecture to the ...
,
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 ...
.
Iioka was a noted port town in 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 characteriz ...
, and prospered greatly in the aftermath of the
Great Fire of Meireki in 1657, as a transshipment center for timber and building materials to
Edo
Edo ( ja, , , "bay-entrance" or "estuary"), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo.
Edo, formerly a ''jōkamachi'' (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the ''de facto'' capital of ...
.
Modern Iioka was formed on April 1, 1889. On March 31, 1954 it expanded through annexation of the villages of Sangawa and a part of Toyooka.
On July 1, 2005, Iioka
was merged with the city of
Asahi
Asahi (朝日, 旭, or あさひ) means "morning sun" in Japanese and may refer to:
Cities
* Asahi, Chiba (旭市; ''Asahi-shi'') Wards
* Asahi-ku, Osaka (旭区; ''Asahi-ku'')
* Asahi-ku, Yokohama (旭; ''Asahi-ku'')
Towns
* Asahi, Aichi (旭 ...
, the town of
Hikata (from
Katori District), and the town of
Unakami (also from
Kaijō District) to form the new Asahi city, and it disappeared.
In April 2005 (the last data available before its merger into Asahi), 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 8,042 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 600 persons per km². Its total area was 18.27 km².
Cultural References
* Iioka is the setting for the first film in the classic Japanese blind swordsman series:
The Tale of Zatoichi
is a 1962 Japanese ''chanbara'' film directed by Kenji Misumi and based on the 1948 essay of the same name by Kan Shimozawa. It is the first installment in a long-running ''jidaigeki'' film series starring Shintaro Katsu as the blind swordsman ...
.
External links
Asahi official website
Dissolved municipalities of Chiba Prefecture
Asahi, Chiba
{{Chiba-geo-stub