22-409: Akō ( 赤穂市 , Akō-shi ) is a city located in southwestern Hyōgo Prefecture , Japan . As of 31 May 2022, the city had an estimated population of 45,747 in 20,563 households and a population density of 360 persons per km. The total area of the city is 126.85 square kilometres (48.98 sq mi). Akō is located in far southwestern Hyōgo Prefecture. The city is on the border of
44-583: A directly elected mayor and a unicameral city council of 18 members. Akō contributes one member to the Hyogo Prefectural Assembly . In terms of national politics, the city is part of Hyōgo 12th district of the lower house of the Diet of Japan . Akō has traditionally been famous for salt production was its main industry during the feudal period. Other industries are light manufacturing, commercial fishing , agriculture and tourism thanks to
66-579: A population of three thousand, while a town in the same prefecture, Otofuke, Hokkaido , has over forty thousand. Under the Act on Special Provisions concerning Merger of Municipalities ( 市町村の合併の特例等に関する法律 , Act No. 59 of 2004) , the standard of 50,000 inhabitants for the city status has been eased to 30,000 if such population is gained as a result of a merger of towns and/or villages , in order to facilitate such mergers to reduce administrative costs. Many municipalities gained city status under this eased standard. On
88-514: Is 15.1 °C. The average annual rainfall is 1519 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 4.8 °C. Per Japanese census data, the population of Akō has remained relatively constant over the past 40 years. Akō was part of ancient Harima province , and has been settled since at least
110-621: Is also located in Akō. [REDACTED] JR West – San'yō Main Line [REDACTED] JR West – Akō Line Cities of Japan A city ( 市 , shi ) is a local administrative unit in Japan . Cities are ranked on the same level as towns ( 町 , machi ) and villages ( 村 , mura ) , with the difference that they are not a component of districts ( 郡 , gun ) . Like other contemporary administrative units, they are defined by
132-676: Is highly automated, and during peak hours trains run as often as every two minutes. JR-West's Urban Network competes with a number of private commuter rail operators around Osaka, the "Big 4" being Hankyu Railway / Hanshin Railway (Hankyu bought Hanshin in April 2005), Keihan Railway , Kintetsu , and Nankai Railway . JR-West's market share in the region is roughly equal to that of the Big 4 put together, largely due to its comprehensive network and high-speed commuter trains (Special Rapid Service trains on
154-842: Is one of the Japan Railways Group (JR Group) companies and operates in western Honshu . It has its headquarters in Kita-ku, Osaka . It is listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange , is a constituent of the TOPIX Large70 index, and is also one of only three Japan Railways Group constituents of the Nikkei 225 index: the others are JR East and JR Central . It was also listed in the Nagoya and Fukuoka stock exchanges until late 2020. JR-West's highest-grossing line
176-793: Is the Sanyo Shinkansen high-speed rail line between Osaka and Fukuoka . The Sanyo Shinkansen alone accounts for about 40% of JR-West's passenger revenues. The company also operates Hakata Minami Line , a short commuter line with Shinkansen trains in Fukuoka . The "Urban Network" is JR-West's name for its commuter rail lines in the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area. These lines together comprise 610 km of track, have 245 stations and account for about 43% of JR-West's passenger revenues. Urban Network stations are equipped to handle ICOCA fare cards. Train control on these lines
198-516: The Hyōgo and Okayama prefectures, which also divides the Kinki and Chūgoku areas. On each side of the border, ancient Harima and Bizen provinces, which are now Akō and Bizen cities, respectively (except for the former village of Fukukawa, now part of Akō but formerly belonging to Bizen Province ), have cultivated their own cultures. Therefore, even at the present days, dialects are vastly different on
220-567: The Jomon period , with numerous remains from the Yayoi period and Kofun period found within city limits. During the Edo period , Akō was a capital of Akō Domain , which was noted for its salt production. The town Akō was created with the establishment of the modern municipalities system on April 1, 1889. It was raised to city status on September 1, 1951. Akō has a mayor-council form of government with
242-664: The Local Autonomy Law of 1947. Article 8 of the Local Autonomy Law sets the following conditions for a municipality to be designated as a city: The designation is approved by the prefectural governor and the Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications . A city can theoretically be demoted to a town or village when it fails to meet any of these conditions, but such a demotion has not happened to date. The least populous city, Utashinai, Hokkaido , has
SECTION 10
#1732781118793264-592: The Sanyō Shinkansen , from the separate Shinkansen Holding Corporation. JR-West purchased the line in October 1991 at a cost of 974.1 billion JPY (about US$ 7.2 billion) in long-term debt. JNRSC sold 68.3% of JR-West in an initial public offering on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in October 1996. After JNRSC was dissolved in October 1998, its shares of JR-West were transferred to the government-owned Japan Railway Construction Public Corporation (JRCC), which merged into
286-451: The "city code" ( shisei , 市制) of 1888 during the "Great Meiji mergers" ( Meiji no daigappei , 明治の大合併) of 1889. The -shi replaced the previous urban districts /"wards/cities" (-ku) that had existed as primary subdivisions of prefectures besides rural districts (-gun) since 1878. Initially, there were 39 cities in 1889: only one in most prefectures, two in a few (Yamagata, Toyama, Osaka, Hyōgo, Fukuoka), and none in some – Miyazaki became
308-466: The Kobe and Kyoto lines operate at up to 130 km/h). Those in italics are announcement names. A number of other lines account for more than half of JR-West's track mileage. These lines mainly handle business and leisure travel between smaller cities and rural areas in western Japan. They account for about 20% of the company's passenger revenues. JR-West subsidiaries include the following. JR-West
330-627: The harshest-sounding dialects. The Chikusa River flows through the center of the city, providing the moat of Akō Castle with water through a branch, Kariya River. The central part of the city around the castle has been built on the alluvial plain of Chikusa River. Parts of the city are within the borders of the Setonaikai National Park . Hyōgo Prefecture Okayama Prefecture Akō has a Humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa ) characterized by warm summers and cool winters with light to no snowfall. The average annual temperature in Akō
352-542: The last prefecture to contain its first city in 1924. In Okinawa -ken and Hokkai-dō which were not yet fully equal prefectures in the Empire, major urban settlements remained organized as urban districts until the 1920s: Naha-ku and Shuri-ku, the two urban districts of Okinawa were only turned into Naha -shi and Shuri-shi in May 1921, and six -ku of Hokkaidō were converted into district-independent cities in August 1922. By 1945,
374-602: The number of cities countrywide had increased to 205. After WWII , their number almost doubled during the "great Shōwa mergers" of the 1950s and continued to grow so that it surpassed the number of towns in the early 21st century (see the List of mergers and dissolutions of municipalities in Japan ). As of October 1 2018, there are 792 cities of Japan. West Japan Railway Company The West Japan Railway Company , also referred to as JR West ( JR西日本 , Jeiāru Nishi-Nihon ) ,
396-448: The other hand, the municipalities recently gained the city status purely as a result of increase of population without expansion of area are limited to those listed in List of former towns or villages gained city status alone in Japan . The Cabinet of Japan can designate cities of at least 200,000 inhabitants to have the status of core city , or designated city . These statuses expand the scope of administrative authority delegated from
418-547: The prefectural government to the city government. Tokyo , Japan's capital, existed as a city until 1943, but is now legally classified as a special type of prefecture called a metropolis ( 都 , to ) . The 23 special wards of Tokyo , which constitute the core of the Tokyo metropolitan area, each have an administrative status analogous to that of cities. Tokyo also has several other incorporated cities, towns and villages within its jurisdiction. Cities were introduced under
440-627: The sides of the border. A traveller from west to east on the JR San'yō Main Line will notice that the dialect of passengers suddenly changes between Kamigori station in Hyogo prefecture and Mitsuishi station in Okayama prefecture. In Akō, people speak a type of the Kansai dialect whose intonation is however of the Tokyo type. The superset of the dialect spoken in Akō, called Banshū-ben , is known as one of
462-526: The story of the forty-seven rōnin , as featured in the Chūshingura . Akō has ten public elementary schools and five public middle schools operated by the city government and one public high schools operated by the Hyōgo Prefectural Department of Education. The prefecture also operates a special education school for the handicapped. The Kansai University of Social Welfare was founded in 1997
SECTION 20
#1732781118793484-529: Was incorporated as a business corporation ( kabushiki kaisha ) on April 1, 1987, as part of the breakup of the state-owned Japanese National Railways (JNR). Initially, it was a wholly owned subsidiary of the JNR Settlement Corporation (JNRSC), a special company created to hold the assets of the former JNR while they were shuffled among the new JR companies. For the first four years of its existence, JR-West leased its highest-revenue line,
#792207