was 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

Saitama Prefecture is a landlocked prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Saitama Prefecture has a population of 7,338,536 (1 January 2020) and has a geographic area of 3,797 km2 (1,466 sq mi). Saitama Prefecture borders Tochigi 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 n ...

. On May 1, 2001, Ōmiya was merged with the cities of Urawa and Yono to create the city of Saitama. Since April 1, 2003, the area of former Ōmiya City has been divided into 4 wards: Kita-ku, Minuma-ku, Nishi-ku and Ōmiya-ku of Saitama City.

History

Origin and pre-modern history

Ōmiya is an indigenous

Japanese language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ...

word which can be decomposed to ''Ō'' (大, kun'yomi (Japanese reading) おお: large, great) and ''miya'' (宮, kun'yomi み-や: noble or holy - house; palace or

shrine A shrine ( la, scrinium "case or chest for books or papers"; Old French: ''escrin'' "box or case") is a sacred or holy space dedicated to a specific deity, ancestor, hero, martyr, saint, daemon, or similar figure of respect, wherein they ...

) after the Hikawa Shrine. The town was on the

Nakasendō The , also called the ,Richard Lane, ''Images from the Floating World'' (1978) Chartwell, Secaucus ; pg. 285 was one of the five routes of the Edo period, and one of the two that connected Edo (modern-day Tokyo) to Kyoto in Japan. There were 69 ...

, a main national road in the

feudal Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structur ...

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 character ...

and the predecessor to a part of National Highway Route 17, and the

Takasaki Line The Takasaki Line ( ja, 高崎線, ) is a Japanese railway line which connects Ōmiya Station in Saitama, Saitama Prefecture and Takasaki Station in Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture. It is owned and operated by the East Japan Railway Company (JR East) ...

. Its name was derived from the famous shrine.

Modern Ōmiya

* On April 1, 1899, the town of Ōmiya as a modern municipality was founded. * After the

1923 Great Kantō earthquake The struck the Kantō Plain on the main Japanese island of Honshū at 11:58:44 JST (02:58:44 UTC) on Saturday, September 1, 1923. Varied accounts indicate the duration of the earthquake was between four and ten minutes. Extensive firestorms an ...

, bonsai nurseries relocated from

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.46 ...

and formed the bonsai village. * In 1940, Ōmiya became a city after several surrounding village annexations/mergers.

Saitama City era

* On May 1, 2001, Ōmiya was merged with the cities of Urawa and Yono to create the new capital city of Saitama. * On April 1, 2003, when Saitama became a

designated city A , also known as a or , is a Japanese city that has a population greater than 500,000 and has been designated as such by order of the Cabinet of Japan under Article 252, Section 19, of the Local Autonomy Law. Designated cities are delegate ...

, the former area of Ōmiya City has been divided into 4 wards: Kita-ku, Minuma-ku, Nishi-ku and Ōmiya-ku.

Education

A North Korean school, Saitama Korean Elementary and Middle School ( 埼玉朝鮮初中級学校), was previously in the City of Ōmiya.埼玉朝鮮初中級学校とは？
" Saitama Korean Elementary and Middle School. Retrieved on October 14, 2015. "〒330-0804 埼玉県大宮市堀之内町１の５０１の１"

References

External links

Archive of Ōmiya's website
Dissolved municipalities of Saitama Prefecture {{Saitama-geo-stub