is a

district A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or county, counties, several municipality, municip ...

located in

Aomori Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan in the Tōhoku region. The prefecture's capital, largest city, and namesake is the city of Aomori (city), Aomori. Aomori is the northernmost prefecture on Japan's main island, Honshu, and is border ...

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 ...

. It occupies the east-central portion of the prefecture, south of Shimokita Peninsula. As of 2010, the district has 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 100,526 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 78.5 persons per km². The total area was 1281.05 km².

Politics

In terms of national politics, the district is represented in 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 ...

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entities. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often ...

as a part of the Aomori 1st district and the

Aomori 2nd district Aomori 2nd district (青森県第2区, ''Aomori-ken dai-niku'' or simply 青森2区, ''Aomori-niku'') is a single-member constituency of the House of Representatives of Japan, House of Representatives in the national Diet of Japan. It is located ...

Towns and villages

The district consists of six towns and one village. The cities of Towada and Misawa were formerly part of the district. * Noheji * Oirase * Rokkasho * Rokunohe * Shichinohe * Tōhoku *

Yokohama is the List of cities in Japan, second-largest city in Japan by population as well as by area, and the country's most populous Municipalities of Japan, municipality. It is the capital and most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a popu ...

History

Kamikita District was part of ancient , established by the

Northern Fujiwara The Northern Fujiwara (奥州藤原氏 ''Ōshū Fujiwara-shi'') were a Japanese noble family that ruled the Tōhoku region (the northeast of Honshū) of Japan during the 12th century as their own realm.

. 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 ...

, the area was part of the Morioka han feudal domain of the

Nanbu clan The was a Japanese clan, Japanese samurai clan who ruled most of northeastern Honshū in the Tōhoku region of Japan for over 700 years, from the Kamakura period through the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The Nanbu claimed descent from the Seiwa Ge ...

, with daikansho located in Noheji and Shichinohe. The Nanbu clan sided with the

Ōuetsu Reppan Dōmei The was a Japanese military-political coalition established and disestablished over the course of several months in early to mid-1868 during the Boshin War. Its flag was either a white interwoven five-pointed star on a black field, or a black ...

during the

Boshin War The , sometimes known as the Japanese Revolution or Japanese Civil War, was a civil war in Japan fought from 1868 to 1869 between forces of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate and a coalition seeking to seize political power in the name of the Impe ...

of the

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 ...

and were punished by the new

Meiji government The was the government that was formed by politicians of the Satsuma Domain and Chōshū Domain in the 1860s. The Meiji government was the early government of the Empire of Japan. Politicians of the Meiji government were known as the Meiji ...

by loss of their northern territories. In November 1869, Kita-gun and neighboring Sannohe District became part of the newly created , a 30,000

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. One koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about of rice. It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1,000 gō. One ''gō'' is the traditional volume of a single serving of rice (before co ...

holding created to resettle the dispossessed

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 the ...

from Aizu-Wakamatsu. In July 1871, with the

abolition of the han system The in the Empire of Japan and its replacement by a system of prefectures in 1871 was the culmination of the Meiji Restoration begun in 1868, the starting year of the Meiji period. Under the reform, all daimyos (, ''daimyō'', feudal lords) ...

, Tonami Domain became Tonami Prefecture, and was merged into the newly created Aomori Prefecture in September 1871. During the early

Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

administrative reorganization of Japan on July 22, 1878, Kamikita and Shimokita were divided from former Kita County, and Kamikita was divided into 50 villages. In the cadastral reform of April 1, 1889, the number of villages was reduced through consolidations and mergers to sixteen.

District Timeline

* On September 27, 1897, the village of Noheji was elevated to town status. * On September 1, 1902, the village of Shichinohe was elevated to town status. * On September 1, 1910, the village of Sanbongi was elevated to town status. * On April 20, 1929, the village of Momoishi was elevated to town status. * On February 1, 1948, several villages or portions of villages were merged to create the town of Omisawa. * On February 1, 1956, the town of Sanbongi was elevated to city status. * On April 1, 1956, the village of Towada was elevated to town status. * On October 1, 1957, the village of Rokunohe was elevated to town status. * On April 1, 1958, the village of Yokohama was elevated to town status. * On September 1, 1958, the town of Omisawa was elevated to city status and became the city of Misawa. * On September 1, 1958, the village of Uranodate was elevated to town status and became the town of Kamikita. * On August 1, 1969, the village of Shimoda was elevated to town status. * On April 1, 1975, the town of Towada was renamed as the town of Towadako.

District Background

Recent mergers

* On January 1, 2005 - The town of Towadako was merged into the expanded city of Towada. * On March 1, 2005 - The towns of Shimoda and Momoishi were merged to form the town of Oirase.

References

{{coord, 40, 46, 26, N, 141, 15, 39, E, region:JP-13, display=title Districts in Aomori Prefecture