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 Kōka District,

Shiga Prefecture is a landlocked prefecture of Japan in the Kansai region of Honshu. Shiga Prefecture has a population of 1,398,972 as of 1 February 2025 and has a geographic area of . Shiga Prefecture borders Fukui Prefecture to the north, Gifu Prefecture to th ...

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 ...

. On October 1, 2004, Ishibe, along with the town of Kōsei (also from Kōka District), was merged to create the city of

Konan Konan may refer to: * Conan (disambiguation), a name spelt "Konan" in the Breton language * ''Kɔnan'', a male given name in a number of Akan cultures, chiefly the Baoulé people, for whom it is typically given to any male born on a Wednesday (''ml ...

. An NSK Bearings plant is located here.

Demographics

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 12,418 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 931.58 persons per km². The total area was 13.33 km²

History

During the

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

, one of the 53 Stations of Tōkaidō road was found in the town, called Ishibe-juku. These post stations, or

Shukuba were Stage station, staging post stations during the Edo period in Japan, generally located on one of the Edo Five Routes or one of its sub-routes. They were also called ''shuku-eki'' (宿駅). These stage stations, or "" developed around them, ...

, allowed travellers to rest on their journey and present their travelling permits.

References

Dissolved municipalities of Shiga Prefecture {{Shiga-geo-stub