was a

town A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...

located in the Higashimatsuura District of

Saga Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyushu. Saga Prefecture has a population of roughly 780,000 and has a geographic area of . Saga Prefecture borders Fukuoka Prefecture to the northeast and Nagasaki Prefect ...

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 ...

. As of 2003, the town 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 10,311 and a

density Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the ratio of a substance's mass to its volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' (or ''d'') can also be u ...

of 197.79 persons per km². The total area was 52.13 km². On January 1, 2005, Hamatama, along with the towns of

Chinzei The branch, also called the Chinzei Doctrine (鎮西義), is one of the two largest branches of Jōdo-shū Buddhism (the second being Seizan). The tradition traces itself to Benchō (a.k.a. Shōkō Shōnin), a disciple of Hōnen, but it was f ...

, Hizen, Kyūragi, Ōchi and Yobuko, and the village of Kitahata (all from Higashimatsuura District), was merged into the expanded city of Karatsu. It is adjacent to the relatively well-known Nijinomatsubara pine tree forest, and borders the

Sea of Japan The Sea of Japan is the marginal sea between the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin, the Korean Peninsula, and the mainland of the Russian Far East. The Japanese archipelago separates the sea from the Pacific Ocean. Like the Mediterranean Sea, it ...

with three miles of whitesand beach. Behind the beach and forest is Mt Kagamiyama with its outstandin
observatory

References

History of Hamatama (1991)
(浜玉町史) (BN03813736

Dissolved municipalities of Saga Prefecture Beaches of Japan Karatsu, Saga {{Saga-geo-stub