is a town located in

Kuma District is a district located in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. In 2003 the district had an estimated population of 64,552 and a density of 48.64 persons per square kilometer. The total area is 1,327.16 km2. History Economy Kuma District is noted fo ...

(also known as ''Kuma County''), Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. The town's name is the Japanese word for "

brocade Brocade is a class of richly decorative shuttle-woven fabrics, often made in colored silks and sometimes with gold and silver threads. The name, related to the same root as the word "broccoli", comes from Italian ''broccato'' meaning "embos ...

", and is used as a name for more than one town in Japan. The town can trace its origin back to the merger of three villages in 1884. Two more villages (''Ichibu'' and ''Kijo'') were merged with Nishiki, then known as ''Nishi-mura'' or "West village", in 1955. It formally gained its status as a town (町; chō or machi) on April 1, 1965. At one time, between 1985 and 2006, Nishiki was twinned with the (now defunct) town of

Nishiki, Yamaguchi was a town located in Kuga District, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. As of 2003, the town had an estimated population of 4,042 and a density Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the substance's mass per unit of volume. The sy ...

. In April 2017, the town had an estimated population of 10,899 and a density of 140.26 persons per km². The total area is . Nishiki is served by the Higo-Nishinomura Station of the

Kumagawa Railroad Yunomae Line The is a railway line in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, connecting Hitoyoshi-Onsen Station in Hitoyoshi and Yunomae Station in Yunomae. It is the only railway line operated by the third sector . As the company name suggests, the line parallels ...

Flag

The current town flag was adopted in 1956, however there is no formal flag law codifying this.Nishiki Town (Kumamoto prefecture, Japan) 錦町 – Flags of the World
/ref> The flag is green with a town emblem in the center. The emblem is a stylized katakana ニNi of Nishiki. The circle "symbolizes a reconciliation and the mountain, the river and the sun do the town located in the center of Kuma Basin which is expanding to the future".

Geography

Nishiki is located in the southern part of Kumamoto prefecture. 70 kilometers (43.5 miles) South-southeast of the town is the

prefectural capital A prefectural capital is a city where a prefectural government and assembly is located. Japan In Japan, a prefectural capital is officially called , but the term is also used (). List of Japanese prefectural capitals Notes: ¹ Non-capital ...

. The northern portion of the town lies in flat terrain that forms part of the ''Hitoyoshi Basin''; the Kuma River borders the town to the East and West. The southern reaches of the ''Kuju mountain range'' (九重山, Kujūsan) adjoins one corner of the town limits. The southernmost corner of the townsland meets the prefectural border with Miyazaki Prefecture.

Economy

The town's economy is primarily based around agriculture (primarily pear, peach and rice cultivation) and leisure tourism activities such as golf holidays, though the Nishiki plant of Renesas Semiconductor (formerly NEC Kumamoto) is also a major contributor. The Nishiki plant specializes in

LSI LSI may refer to: Science and technology * Large-scale integration, integrated circuits with tens of thousands of transistors * Latent semantic indexing, a technique in natural language processing * LSI-11, an early large-scale integration com ...

manufacturing. The total economic output of Nishiki for fiscal year 2004 was ¥40.7 billion yen.

World War II

During the closing years of the Second World War, a major base of the Imperial Japanese Navy's Hitoyoshi Naval Air Group was located near the town. Relatively little is currently known about the base and its operations due to a loss of records and institutional memory both during and after the war. The remains of the base extend over of land, and houses underground facilities in more than 10 locations, including an operations room and a large torpedo preparation area. In 2015, a full archeological survey of the site was initiated by the municipal government via the Nishiki

board of education A board of education, school committee or school board is the board of directors or board of trustees of a school, local school district or an equivalent institution. The elected council determines the educational policy in a small regional are ...

to discover more about the base and its past, with a view to eventually opening it up to tourism. This followed the discovery by the local government of a copy of a floor plan for the base.

Notes

References

External links

*
Nishiki official website
* 熊本県の市町村旗一覧 (Municipality Flag List of Kumamoto Prefecture) Japanese Wikipedia {{Authority control Towns in Kumamoto Prefecture 1884 establishments in Japan 1965 establishments in Japan Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service Japan campaign Archaeological sites in Japan Contemporary archaeology Tourism in Japan