270px, Karako-Kagi Site 270px, downtown Tawaramoto is 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 Shiki District,

Nara Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Nara Prefecture has a population of 1,321,805 and has a geographic area of . Nara Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture to the north, Osaka Prefecture to the ...

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 ...

. , 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 31,470 in 13653 households, and a

population density Population density (in agriculture: Standing stock (disambiguation), 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 geog ...

of 1500 persons per km². The total area of the town is .

Geography

Located in the center of the Nara Basin, the entire area of Tawaramoto is flat. The

Yamato River The is a river that flows through Nara Prefecture and Osaka Prefecture, Japan. It is designated Classification of rivers in Japan, Class A by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT). The river flows via towns: *Nara ...

flows through the eastern part of the town, the Tera River flows in the center, and the Asuka River and Soga River flow northward in the western part.

Surrounding municipalities

* Kashihara * Kōryō * Miyake * Sakurai * Tenri

Climate

Tawaramoto has a

humid subtropical climate A humid subtropical climate is a subtropical -temperate climate type, characterized by long and hot summers, and cool to mild winters. These climates normally lie on the southeast side of all continents (except Antarctica), generally between ...

(Köppen ''Cfa'') characterized by warm summers and cool winters with light to no snowfall. The average annual temperature in Tawaramoto is 14.1 °C. The average annual rainfall is 1636 mm with September as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in August, at around 26.1 °C, and lowest in January, at around 2.6 °C.Tawaramoto climate: Average Temperature, weather by month
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Demographics

Per Japanese census data, the population of Tawaramoto is as shown below

History

The area of Tawaramoto was part of ancient

Yamato Province was a province of Japan, located in Kinai, corresponding to present-day Nara Prefecture in Honshū. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric (2005). "Yamato" in . It was also called . Yamato consists of two characters, 大 "great", and 和 " Wa". At first, th ...

and contains extensive

Yayoi period The Yayoi period (弥生時代, ''Yayoi jidai'') (c. 300 BC – 300 AD) is one of the major historical periods of the Japanese archipelago. It is generally defined as the era between the beginning of food production in Japan and the emergence o ...

ruins. 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 ruled by the ''

hatamoto A was a high ranking samurai in the direct service of the Tokugawa shogunate of feudal Japan. While all three of the Shōgun, shogunates in History of Japan, Japanese history had official retainers, in the two preceding ones, they were referred ...

'' Hirano clan, which was briefly (1868-1871) raised to the status of "Tawaramoto Domain" in the early years of the

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 ...

. The town of Tawaramoto was established on April 1, 1889 with the creation of the modern municipalities system. On September 30, 1956 Tawaramoto annexed the neighboring villages of Tama, Kawahigashi, Hirano and Miyako.

Government

Tawaramoto 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 consisting of one house or assembly that legislates and votes as one. Unicameralism has become an increasingly common type of legislature, making up nearly ...

town council of 14 members. Tawaramoto contributes two members to the Nara Prefectural Assembly. In terms of national politics, the town is part of the Nara 2nd district of the

lower house A lower house is the lower chamber of a bicameral legislature, where the other chamber is the upper house. Although styled as "below" the upper house, in many legislatures worldwide, the lower house has come to wield more power or otherwise e ...

of 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 ...

Economy

The local economy is based on agriculture and light manufacturing.

Education

Tawaramoto has five public elementary schools and two public junior high schools operated by the town government and two public high schools operated by the Nara Prefectural Board of Education.

Transportation

Railways

20px

Kintetsu Railway , referred to as and officially Kinki-Nippon Railway, is a Japanese passenger railway company, managing infrastructure and operating passenger train service. Its railway system is the largest in Japan, excluding Japan Railways Group. The railw ...

- Kashihara Line : 16px - 20px

- Tawaramoto Line : 16px -

Highways

Keinawa Expressway *

Local attractions

* Karako-Kagi Site, National Historic Site * Jinraku-ji

Notable people from Tawaramoto

* Sue Sumii, social reformer, writer, and novelist

References

External links

* * * Towns in Nara Prefecture {{Nara-geo-stub