270px, Amagasaki Castle 270px, Aerial view of Amagasaki city center 270px, Amagasaki Station is an industrial

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

Hyōgo Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Hyōgo Prefecture has a population of 5,469,762 () and has a geographic area of . Hyōgo Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture to the east, Osaka Prefecture to the southeast, an ...

, Japan. , 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 455,555 in 223812 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 9000 persons per km². The total area of the city is .

Geography

Amagasaki is located in far southeastern Hyōgo Prefecture, next to

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...

. It has the fourth largest population in Hyōgo Prefecture after

Kobe Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, whic ...

Himeji 260px, Himeji City Hall is a city located in Hyōgo Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 525,682 in 227,099 households and a population density of 980 persons per km². The total area of the city is ...

, and

Nishinomiya 270px, Nishinomiya City Hall 270px, Aerial view of Nishinomiya city center 270px, Hirota Shrine is a city located in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 484,368 in 218948 households and a population density of 48 ...

. Residential areas account for most of the rest of the coastal areas, industrial areas along the

Meishin Expressway The , or Nagoya-Kōbe Expressway is a toll expressway in Japan. It runs from a junction with the Tōmei Expressway in Komaki, Aichi (outside Nagoya) west to Nishinomiya, Hyōgo (between Osaka and Kobe). It is the main road link between Osaka and ...

and

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 ...

Fukuchiyama Line The is a railway line operated by West Japan Railway Company (JR West) connecting Osaka and Fukuchiyama, Kyoto, Fukuchiyama, Japan. Within JR West's "Urban Network" covering the Osaka–Kobe–Kyoto metropolitan region, the line from Osaka to S ...

, commercial areas around Hanshin Amagasaki Station and JR JR Amagasaki Station, and its population density is the highest among municipalities in Hyogo Prefecture. Ground subsidence caused by the pumping up of groundwater by factories has reduced one-third of the city's area to sea level, causing flooding damage due to storm surges.

Neighboring municipalities

Hyōgo Prefecture * Itami *

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 ...

(

Nishiyodogawa-ku is one of 24 wards of Osaka, Japan. Education It has a North Korean school, Osaka Fukushima Korean Elementary School ( 大阪福島朝鮮初級学校). Economy Nishoyodogawa has the headquarters of Ezaki Glico and Daifuku.Yodogawa-ku is one of 24 wards of Osaka, Japan. It is located in the north of the city. Economy Nissin Foods has its corporate headquarters in Yodogawa-ku. The company moved to its current headquarters in 1977, when the construction of the building was comp ...

) *

Toyonaka is a city in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. The city was founded on October 15, 1936. Geography Climate Toyonaka has a Humid subtropical climate (Köppen ''Cfa'') characterized by warm summers and cool winters with light to no snowfall. The averag ...

Climate

Amagasaki 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 snowfall. The average annual temperature in Amagasaki is 15.0 °C. The average annual rainfall is 1475 mm with September as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in January, at around 26.9 °C, and lowest in January, at around 3.7 °C.

Demographics

Per Japanese census data, the population of Amagasaki peaked around 1970s has been decreasing steadily since .

History

The area of Amagasaki was part of ancient Kawabe District of

Settsu Province was a province of Japan, which today comprises the southeastern part of Hyōgo Prefecture and the northern part of Osaka Prefecture. It was also referred to as or . Osaka and Osaka Castle were the main center of the province. Most of Settsu's ...

and has been inhabited since ancient times, with the traces of

Yayoi period The started at the beginning of the Neolithic in Japan, continued through the Bronze Age, and towards its end crossed into the Iron Age. Since the 1980s, scholars have argued that a period previously classified as a transition from the Jōmon p ...

settlementsand many

kofun are megalithic tombs or tumuli in Northeast Asia. ''Kofun'' were mainly constructed in the Japanese archipelago between the middle of the 3rd century to the early 7th century CE.岡田裕之「前方後円墳」『日本古代史大辞典』� ...

burial mound Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objec ...

s found within the city limits. From the

Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japanese. ...

, the area was known for its port of Daimotsuura. During 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 ...

, Amagasaki prospered as the

castle town A castle town is a settlement built adjacent to or surrounding a castle. Castle towns were common in Medieval Europe. Some examples include small towns like Alnwick and Arundel, which are still dominated by their castles. In Western Europe, ...

Amagasaki Domain 250px, Reconstructed Amagasaki Castle tenshu was a feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, located in Settsu Province in what is now the southeastern portion of modern-day Hyōgo Prefecture. It had its administrative h ...

undertake Aoayama and subsequently the

Matsudaira clan The was a Japanese samurai clan that descended from the Minamoto clan. It originated in and took its name from Matsudaira village, in Mikawa Province (modern-day Aichi Prefecture). During the Sengoku period, the chieftain of the main line of th ...

s. The town of Amagasaki was established on April 1, 1889 with the creation of the modern municipalities system. It was elevated to city status on October 1, 1916. The 1934 Muroto typhoon caused 145 fatalities and much of the city was destroyed by air raids on June 1 and June 15, 1945 during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. The 1995

Great Hanshin earthquake The , or Kobe earthquake, occurred on January 17, 1995, at 05:46:53 JST (January 16 at 20:46:53 UTC) in the southern part of Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, including the region known as Hanshin. It measured 6.9 on the moment magnitude scale and had ...

also caused considerable damage and 49 fatalities. Amagasaki was designated a special city on April 1, 2001 with increased local autonomy. A commuter train derailed on the Fukuchiyama Line near Amagasaki on April 25, 2005, resulting in more than 100 dead and 550 injured. On April 1, 2009, Amagasaki was elevated to the status of a

core city In urban planning, a core city, principal city metropolitan core, or central city, is the largest or most important city or cities of a metropolitan area. A core city is surrounded by smaller satellite cities, towns, and suburbs. A central city i ...

Government

Amagasaki 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 42 members. Amagasaki contributes seven members to the Hyōgo Prefectural Assembly. In terms of national politics, the city is in the Hyōgo 8th 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 ...

Politics of Amagasaki

2002 Amagasaki mayoral election Amagasaki, Hyōgo held a mayoral election on November 17, 2002. Aya Shirai, backed by the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) and the local group Amagasaki Residents Group for Democratic City Administration defeated the incumbent Yoshio Miyata, who had ...

On 22 November 2010

Kazumi Inamura is a Japanese politician. She has been mayor of Amagasaki since 13 December 2010. She is member of the Greens Japan political party and was its co-president from 2008 to 2010. She was a student at the University of Kobe during the 1995 Great Ha ...

became the first popularly elected Greens Japan Mayor as well as the youngest popularly-elected female mayor of the city with 54% of the vote.

Economy

Amagasaki is a major part of the

Hanshin Industrial Region The is one of the largest industrial regions in Japan. Its name comes from the ''on''-reading of the kanji used to abbreviate the names of Osaka (大阪) and Kobe (神戸), the two largest cities in the megalopolis. The GDP of this area (Osaka a ...

. Businesses headquartered in the city include manufacturers such as

Osaka Titanium Technologies is a Japanese non-ferrous metal manufacturing company based in Amagasaki, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. It is the world's second largest producer of titanium sponge after VSMPO-Avisma. It produces titanium products using the Kroll process, and also ...

. The value of manufactured goods shipments in Amagasaki was 1,288 billion yen in 2004.

Education

Amagasaki has 42 public elementary schools and 17 public middle schools operated by the city government, 11 public high schools operated by the Hyōgo Prefectural Board of Education, and two combined private middle/high schools. In addition, the city also operates one special education school for the handicapped. The

College of Industrial Technology is a private junior college in Amagasaki, Hyogo, Japan. The Japan Iron and Steel Federation Corp considered it necessary to provide specialized training to engineers who would work in the iron and steel industry in 1962. It consists of four ...

, a junior college, and the Sonoda Women's University, a women's four-year college with associated junior college are located in the city The city has a North Korean school, .() It previously had a second school, .

Transportation

Railways

Tōkaidō Main Line The is a major Japanese railway line of the Japan Railways Group (JR Group) network, connecting and stations. It is long, not counting its many freight feeder lines around the major cities. The high-speed Tōkaidō Shinkansen largely parallel ...

(

JR Kobe Line The is the nickname of portions of the Tokaido Main Line and the Sanyo Main Line, between Osaka Station in Osaka, Osaka Prefecture and Himeji Station in Himeji, Hyōgo Prefecture. The line, along with the JR Kyoto Line and the Biwako Line, form ...

) * -

(

JR Takarazuka Line The is a railway line operated by West Japan Railway Company (JR West) connecting Osaka and Fukuchiyama, Japan. Within JR West's "Urban Network" covering the Osaka–Kobe–Kyoto metropolitan region, the line from Osaka to Sasayamaguchi is also ...

) * - -

JR Tōzai Line is one of several commuter rail lines and services in the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto Metropolitan Area, operated by West Japan Railway Company (JR West). The line, whose name literally means "east-west", runs underground through central Osaka and conne ...

* - -

Hankyu , trading as , is a Japanese private railway company that provides commuter and interurban service to the northern Kansai region and is one of the flagship properties of Hankyu Hanshin Holdings Inc., in turn part of the Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group ...

- Kobe Line * - - Hankyu Railway Logo

Itami Line 270px, Gogadzuka Kofun 270px, Aerial view of Itami city center 270px, Konoike inari shihi 270px, Arioka Castle ruins ) is a city located in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 197,215 in 83580 households and ...

Hanshin Electric Railway is a Japanese private railway company of Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group that links Osaka and Kobe. It also owns the Hanshin Tigers baseball team. The first character for Kobe (神戸) and the second character for Osaka (大阪) combine to form the c ...

Hanshin Main Line {{BS-map , title=Route map , title-bg=orangered , title-color=white , collapsible=yes , collapse=yes , map= {{BS, , , Lines are of Hanshin unless noted, } {{BS5, , hBHF, , , tBHF, , , {{STN, Osaka/{{STN, Kitashinchi} {{BS5, , hSTR, exKBHFa, tKACC ...

* - - - - -

Hanshin Namba Line The is a railway line operated by the private railway operator Hanshin Electric Railway connecting Amagasaki Station in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, and Ōsaka Namba Station in Chuo-ku, Osaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan. History The , the pre ...

* -

Highways

Hanshin Expressway The is a network of expressways surrounding Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto, Japan. Operated by , it opened in 1962. Portions of the Hanshin Expressway about east of Fukae Station collapsed during the Kobe earthquake on 17 January 1995. These section ...

Kobe Route The , signed as Route 3, is one of the routes of the Hanshin Expressway system serving the Keihanshin area in Kansai, Japan. It is an intercity route that travels in an east to west direction from Osaka to Kobe, with a total length of . Rou ...

Bayshore Route (Port of Osaka-Kobe) * * *

Sister city relations

* Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany - since April 7, 1959 * Anshan, Liaoning, China - since February 2, 1983 (friendship city) * Kami, Hyōgo (Mikata), Kami, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan (Formerly Mikata, Hyōgo, Mikata) - since 1974 (friendship city)

Local attractions

*Tano Site, Yayoi period settlement trace, National Historic Site *Amagasaki Castle

Notable people from Amagasaki

* Mitsue Aoki (manga artist) * Chikamatsu Monzaemon (dramatist of the

) * Chiyu (bassist of the band Sug) * Cobra (Japanese band), Cobra (punk rock band) * Downtown (owarai), Downtown (comedy duo) ** Hitoshi Matsumoto ** Masatoshi Hamada (Originally from Naniwa-ku, Osaka) * Gero (singer), Gero (singer) * Heath (musician), Heath (bassist of the band X Japan) * Kunio Hiramatsu (politician) * Kojin Karatani (philosopher) * Toshiki Kashu (actor) * Ryuto Kazuhara (vocalist of boy band Generations from Exile Tribe) * Keichū (Kokugaku scholar from the

) * Yoshitada Konoike (politician) * Maggy (model), Maggy (fashion model) * Ryo Matsuda (actor) * Shōta Matsushima (actor) * Kaho Minami (actress) * Akihiro Murata (shogi player) - Originally from Uozu, Toyama * Nagisa (comedian of comedy duo Amako Inter) * Ramo Nakajima (novelist) * Ai Okawa (fashion model, former idol from Idoling!!!) * Kazuo Shiraga (modern artist) * Keiko Tobe (manga artist) * Rena Uehara (singer) - Born in Amagasaki, based in

* Yu Yagami (manga artist) * Seiichi Yamamoto (musician) - Born in Amagasaki, based in

* Kinuyo Yamashita (video game music composer) * Shota Yasuda (guitarist of boy band Kanjani Eight) * Ai Yazawa (manga artist)

Athletes

* Ritsu Doan (association football, football player) * Yutaka Enatsu (baseball player) - Originally from Nara Prefecture * Megu Hirose (softball player) * Daisuke Hosokawa (swimmer) * Takahiro Ikeyama (baseball player) * Hideki Irabu (former baseball player) - Originally from Hirara, Okinawa (currently Miyakojima, Okinawa) * Norihito Kaneto (baseball player) * Ayumi Karino (softball player) * Kamui Kobayashi (auto racing driver) * Naoki Miyanishi (baseball player) - Originally from Nishinomiya, Hyogo * Minoru Murayama (former baseball player) - Originally from Kita-ku, Kobe * Takahiko Nomaguchi (baseball player) * Kengo Nomoto (basketball player) * Daisuke Oku (association football, football player) * Hiroaki Saiuchi (baseball player) * Tochinowaka Michihiro (former sumo wrestler) * Andy Wu (professional wrestler)

References

External links

*
Amagasaki City official website
English machine translation is available on the site. {{Authority control Amagasaki, Cities in Hyōgo Prefecture Port settlements in Japan Populated coastal places in Japan