was 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 Shiga Prefecture,

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 district 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 147,928 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 267.90 persons per km². The total area was 552.18 km². From circa 1460 until 1574, during the Sengoku period, the district was effectively independent of centralized state control and operated as the '' Kōka-gun Chūsō'', a military confederacy of '' jizamurai'' and other warrior families that became known as

ninja A , or was a spy and infiltrator in pre-modern Japan. The functions of a ninja included siege and infiltration, ambush, reconnaissance, espionage, deception, and later bodyguarding.Kawakami, pp. 21–22 Antecedents may have existed as ear ...

. During this period it formed an

alliance An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or sovereign state, states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not an explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an a ...

with its southern neighbor, the ''Iga Sokoku Ikki'', a similar independent confederacy of ninja families. Both alliance and the ''ikki'' ended when

Oda Nobunaga was a Japanese ''daimyō'' and one of the leading figures of the Sengoku period, Sengoku and Azuchi-Momoyama periods. He was the and regarded as the first "Great Unifier" of Japan. He is sometimes referred as the "Demon Daimyō" and "Demo ...

defeated Kōka and compelled it to be a vassal.

Towns and villages

Before the dissolution in 2004, the district had seven towns as listed below. Each municipality is now a part of the city noted in the parentheses. * Ishibe ( Konan) * Kōsei (Konan) * Kōka ( Kōka) * Kōnan (Kōka) * Minakuchi (Kōka) * Shigaraki (Kōka) * Tsuchiyama (Kōka)

Mergers

*On October 1, 2004: ** the towns of Kōsei and Ishibe were merged to create the city of Konan. ** the former town of Kōka absorbed the towns of Kōnan, Minakuchi, Shigaraki and Tsuchiyama to create the city of Kōka. Kōka District was dissolved as a result of this merger.

References

Former districts of Shiga Prefecture {{Shiga-geo-stub