is a

city A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agree ...

located in the western portion of the

Tokyo Metropolis Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. , the city had an estimated

population Population is a set of humans or other organisms in a given region or area. Governments conduct a census to quantify the resident population size within a given jurisdiction. The term is also applied to non-human animals, microorganisms, and pl ...

of 113,542, and a

population density Population density (in agriculture: Standing 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 geog ...

of 6500 persons per km². The total area of the city is .

Geography

Akishima is located on the left bank of the

Tama River The is a major river in Yamanashi Prefecture, Yamanashi, Kanagawa Prefecture, Kanagawa and Tokyo Prefectures on Honshū, Japan. It is officially classified as a Class 1 river by the Government of Japan, Japanese government. It is long, an ...

, about 35 kilometers west of central Tokyo. The

Tamagawa Aqueduct is a 43-kilometer long Japanese aqueduct located in Tokyo. It was constructed by the Tokugawa shogunate to supply drinking and fire-fighting water from the Tama river to Edo, providing irrigation water around farm villages. The aqueduct was ma ...

flows in the northern part of the city. The city area generally slopes gently from northwest to southeast toward the Tama River, which flows to the south of the city. The altitude of the city area is 170.72 meters above sea level at the highest point and 76.68 meters at the lowest point. With the

JR East The is a major passenger railway company in Japan and the largest of the seven Japan Railways Group companies. The company name is officially abbreviated as JR-EAST or JR East in English, and as in Japanese. The company's headquarters are in ...

Ome Line Ome or OME may refer to: Places * Ome (Bora Bora), a public island in the lagoon of Bora Bora * Ome, Lombardy, Italy, a town and ''comune'' in the Province of Brescia * Ōme, Tokyo, a city in the Prefecture of Tokyo * Ome (crater), a crater on Ma ...

running east to west through the city as a boundary, housing estates,

industrial park An industrial park, also known as industrial estate or trading estate, is an area zoned and planned for the purpose of industrial development. An industrial park can be thought of as a more heavyweight version of a business park or office par ...

s, golf courses, and the Showa Memorial Park occupy a large area in the north. In the south, residential areas occupy a large proportion of the city area.

Surrounding municipalities

Fussa is a city located in the western portion of the Tokyo Metropolis, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 56,786, and a population density of 5600 persons per km². The total area of the city is . About one third of the city area is ...

Hachiōji is a Cities of Japan, city located in the Western Tokyo, western portion of the Tokyo Metropolis, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 561,344, and a population density of 3,000 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . It is ...

Hino Hino may refer to: Places Estonia * Hino, Põlva County * Hino, Võru County ** Lake Hino Japan * Hino, Shiga * Hino, Tokyo * Hino, Tottori ** Hino District, Tottori ** Hino River Transportation * Hino Motors, a Japanese truck manufacturer own ...

Tachikawa file:Autumn colors in Showa memorial park.jpg, 250px, Showa Memorial Park is a Cities of Japan, city located in the western Tokyo, western portion of the Tokyo Metropolis, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 184,383 in 93,428 househ ...

Climate

Akishima has a

humid subtropical climate A humid subtropical climate is a subtropical -temperate climate type, characterized by long and hot summers, and cool to mild winters. These climates normally lie on the southeast side of all continents (except Antarctica), generally between ...

(Köppen ''Cfa'') characterized by warm summers and cool winters with light to no snowfall. The average annual temperature in Akishima is 13.9 °C. The average annual rainfall is 1998 mm with September as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in August, at around 25.4 °C, and lowest in January, at around 2.5 °C.

Demographics

Per Japanese census data, the population of Akishima has increased steadily over the past century.

History

The area of present-day Akishima was part of ancient

Musashi Province was a Provinces of Japan, province of Japan, which today comprises Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolis, most of Saitama Prefecture and part of Kanagawa Prefecture. It was sometimes called . The province encompassed Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Kawasaki and Yokohama. ...

, and a center for

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

. In the post–

Meiji Restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored Imperial House of Japan, imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Althoug ...

cadastral reform of July 22, 1878, the area became part of Kitatama District in

Kanagawa Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the List of Japanese prefectures by population, second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-dens ...

. Haiji, Nakagami, and Sotoyatsu villages were created on April 1, 1889, with the establishment of the modern municipalities system. The entire district was transferred to the control of Tokyo Metropolis on April 1, 1893. The latter two villages merged on January 1, 1928, to form Shōwa Village. Following the dedication of Tachikawa Airfield, which was established in 1922, the surrounding area developed in the 1930s with large-scale munitions factories for aircraft manufacturing for the

Imperial Japanese Army The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA; , ''Dai-Nippon Teikoku Rikugun'', "Army of the Greater Japanese Empire") was the principal ground force of the Empire of Japan from 1871 to 1945. It played a central role in Japan’s rapid modernization during th ...

. Shōwa was elevated to town status on January 1, 1941, and through merger with the village of Haiji on May 1, 1954, became the city of Akishima. The name comes from the ''

kun'yomi is the way of reading kanji characters using the native Japanese word that matches the meaning of the Chinese character when it was introduced. This pronunciation is contrasted with ''on'yomi'', which is the reading based on the original Chi ...

'' of the first ''

kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...

'' in the name of the former town of Shōwa, and the ''

on'yomi , or the Sino-Japanese vocabulary, Sino-Japanese reading, is the reading of a kanji based on the historical Chinese pronunciation of the character. A single kanji might have multiple ''on'yomi'' pronunciations, reflecting the Chinese pronuncia ...

'' of the second ''kanji'' in the name of the former village of Haijima.

Government

Akishima 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 consisting of one house or assembly that legislates and votes as one. Unicameralism has become an increasingly common type of legislature, making up nearly ...

city council of 22 members. Akishima contributes one member to the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly. In terms of national politics, the city is part of

Tokyo 25th district Tōkyō 25th district is a constituency of the House of Representatives in the Diet of Japan. It is located in the westernmost part of Tokyo prefecture. In of 2012, 321,319 eligible voters were registered in the district giving it the highest vot ...

of the

lower house A lower house is the lower chamber of a bicameral legislature, where the other chamber is the upper house. Although styled as "below" the upper house, in many legislatures worldwide, the lower house has come to wield more power or otherwise e ...

of the

Diet of Japan , transcription_name = ''Kokkai'' , legislature = 215th Session of the National Diet , coa_pic = Flag of Japan.svg , house_type = Bicameral , houses = , foundation=29 November 1890(), leader1_type ...

Economy

Akishima was developed as an industrial suburb of Tokyo, and still has large factories operated by

Hoya Corporation is a Japanese company manufacturing optical products such as photomasks, photomask blanks and hard disk drive platters, contact lenses and eyeglass lenses for the health-care market, medical photonics, lasers, photographic filters, medical fl ...

JEOL is a major developer and manufacturer of electron microscopes and other scientific instruments, industrial equipment and medical equipment. Its headquarters are in Tokyo, Japan, with 25 domestic and foreign subsidiaries and associated companies ...

Japan Aviation Electronics is a Japanese corporation specializing in the manufacture and sales of electrical connectors such as high speed LVDS, HDMI, PCI express, high density, micro coaxial, automotive, and board to board connectors. It also makes systems equipment a ...

Fostex is an electronics company that manufactures loudspeakers and audio equipment for other companies or sells them under the trade name Fostex. It is traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Overview Foster Denki supplies audio equipment as an OEM: * ...

, Shōwa Aircraft Industry Co., and others. The city is also 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 ...

for the Tokyo metropolitan area.

Education

Akishima has two public high schools operated by the

Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Board of Education (東京都教育委員会 ''Tōkyō-to Kyōiku Iinkai'') is the board of education in Tokyo, Japan. The board directly manages most of the Public school (government funded), public secondary schoo ...

. * * Akishima has 13 public elementary schools and six public junior high schools operated by the city government. Municipal junior high schools: * Fukujima Junior High School (福島中学校) * Haijima Junior High School ( 拝島中学校) * Seisen Junior High School (清泉中学校) * Showa Junior High School ( 昭和中学校) * Tamabe Junior High School (多摩辺中学校) * Zuiun Junior High School (瑞雲中学校) Municipal elementary schools: * Azuma Elementary School (東小学校) * Fujimigaoka Elementary School (富士見丘小学校) * Hajima No. 1 Elementary School (拝島第一小学校) * Hajima No. 2 Elementary School (拝島第二小学校) * Hajima No. 3 Elementary School (拝島第三小学校) * Koka Elementary School (光華小学校) * Kyosei Elementary School ( 共成小学校) * Musashino Elementary School (武蔵野小学校) * Nakagami Elementary School (中神小学校) * Seirin Elementary School (成隣小学校) * Tamagawa Elementary School (玉川小学校) * Tanaka Elementary School (田中小学校) * Tsutsuji Gaoka Elementary School (つつじが丘小学校) Former municipal elementary schools: * Hajima No. 4 Elementary School (拝島第四小学校) - Merged into Hajima No. 1 in 2015 (

Heisei The was the period of Japanese history corresponding to the reign of Emperor Akihito from 8 January 1989 until his abdication on 30 April 2019. The Heisei era started on 8 January 1989, the day after the death of the Emperor Hirohito, when hi ...

27) * Tsutsuji Gaoka Kita Elementary School (つつじが丘北小学校) - Merged into Tsutsuji Gaoka in 2016 (Heisei 28) * Tsutsuji Gaoka Minami Elementary School (つつじが丘南小学校) - Merged into Tsutsuji Gaoka in 2016 (Heisei 28) The city also has one combined private elementary, junior high, and high school: .

Transportation

Railroads

–

Ōme Line The is a railway line operated by East Japan Railway Company (JR East) in western Tokyo, Japan. It links Tachikawa and the Chūō Line with the town of Okutama. Many Chūō Line trains operate via the Ōme Line to Ōme Station, providing a ...

* – – –

–

Hachikō Line The is a 92.0 km (57.2 mi) regional railway line owned and operated by East Japan Railway Company (JR East). It is located within Tokyo, Saitama, and Gunma Prefectures in Japan. It connects Hachiōji Station in Hachiōji, Tokyo w ...

–

Itsukaichi Line The is a railway line operated by East Japan Railway Company (JR East) in Tokyo, Japan. It links Musashi-Itsukaichi Station in the city of Akiruno, Tokyo, Akiruno with Haijima Station in the city of Akishima, Tokyo, Akishima. From there, some t ...

Seibu Haijima Line The is a railway line in Tokyo, Japan, operated by Seibu Railway. It acts as a branch line of the Seibu Shinjuku Line, with direct trains to Seibu-Shinjuku Station in Tokyo. Haijima Liner ''Haijima Liner'' is a reserved seat express servi ...

Highway

Local attractions

* Showa Memorial Park *

*Hajima Daishi Buddhist temple

Notable people

* Satoshi Koizumi, professional soccer player *

Aja Kong is a Japanese professional wrestler better known by her ring name . She currently makes appearances on the Japanese independent circuit and for Tokyo Joshi Pro-Wrestling (TJPW). She is the founder of the Arsion all-women professional wrestli ...

professional wrestler Professional wrestling, often shortened to either pro wrestling or wrestling,The term "wrestling" is most often widely used to specifically refer to modern scripted professional wrestling, though it is also used to refer to real-life wrest ...

Takao Koyama is a Japanese screenwriter and novelist focusing on anime productions. His name was written as until 1987. Career He graduated from Waseda University in 1972 and joined to Tatsunoko Production as a story creator and a screenwriter. He left fro ...

, screenwriter and novelist *

Sota Miura is a Japanese professional footballer who plays as a left back for J1 League club Kawasaki Frontale and the Japan national team. Club career On 22 December 2023, it was announced that Miura would join J1 League club Kawasaki Frontale on a p ...

, professional soccer player

References

External links

Akishima City Official Website
{{Authority control Cities in Tokyo Western Tokyo