Kawasaki, Kanagawa
As of October 1, 2017, the city has an estimated population of 1,503,690, with 716,470 households, and a population density of 10,000 persons per km. Kawasaki is the only city in Japan with more than one million inhabitants that is not a prefectural capital. The total area is . History. Prehistoric and Ancient era. Archaeological evidence from the Japanese Paleolithic and Jōmon period can only be found in the northwest Tama Hills. The course of the Tama and the coast of the Bay of Tokyo have also changed in historical times, so that large parts of the urban area  are geologically young. Classical era. Nara period to the Sengoku period. With the introduction of the Ritsuryō legal system, the area came to the Musashi Province in the 7th century. In the Nara period, the center of the Tachibana district was probably in the area of today's Takatsu district. Since the Heian period, the domain of the Inage clan has expanded here. Around the Heiken-ji Buddhist temple (better known as Kawasaki-Daishi), founded in 1128, a monzen-machi, a busy district for the supply of pilgrims, soon emerged. Between the Kamakura period and Sengoku period, smaller feudal lords  ruled the area until it finally came under the control of the Later Hōjō clan. Early Modern. In 1611, Koizumi Jidayū had Nikaryō Yōsui built, a canal system on the right bank of the Tama for irrigating the fields, which in some cases still runs through the densely built-up city. On the long-distance Kaidō roads Tōkaidō and Nakaharakaidō built by Edo-Bakufu, stations were built in the area of what would later become Kawasaki, which increased its importance. The Kawasaki station (Kawasaki-juku, near today's Kawasaki station) on the Tōkaidō was not officially recognized until 1623 as  the last of the 53 Tōkaidō stations. The Bakufu let the bridges over the Tama collapse and there were ferry connections to nearby Edo in several places in today's Kawasaki, which laid the foundation for the development of the city. Modern. The rapid urbanization of the area, which continues to this day, began in the Meiji and Taishō eras. In 1872, Kawasaki Station was established on the Tōkaidō Main Line which was Japan's first railway line. In 1889, the city (machi) Kawasaki in the district (gun) Tachibana was created according to the Japanese municipal system introduced the year  before. In 1912 the border between Kanagawa and Tokyo prefectures was established as the Tama River. On July 1, 1924, the independent city (shi-) of Kawasaki with 48,394 inhabitants was formed through a merger with the city of Daishi (formerly Daishigawara) and the village of Miyuki. World War II. As part of World War II, the city was bombed three times by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) between April 1945 and July 1945. The most serious attack was an area bombing with Napalm bombs on April 15, 1945. The attacks destroyed around 35% of the urban area and  claimed 1,520 dead and 8,759 injured. The attacks burned down 9.3 km of the city (see Bombing of Tokyo). Contemporary period. Shōwa era (1945–1989). On April 15, 1945, large parts of the area around the train station and the industrial area at the port were destroyed by air raids. Since the 1950s, residential areas for commuters have been created in the northeastern part of the city, which are connected directly to the centers of Tokyo by new railway lines. On April 1, 1972, Kawasaki became a decree-designated city (seirei shitei toshi) with 5 districts. 1973 the population exceeded the  million mark. In 1982 the new districts of Miyamae and Asao were created by splitting off from the districts of Takatsu and Tama. In the course of deindustrialization, industrial areas have recently been increasingly converted into residential areas (mostly Multi-family residential), so that a further increase in population density can be expected. Geography. Location. Kawasaki is located on the right bank of the Tama River, which flows into the Tokyo Bay here. The city lies like a narrow band between Tokyo in the northeast and Yokohama in the southwest. The city connects the two major cities and is part  of the Greater Tokyo Area, the largest and most densely populated urban areas in the world. The eastern area along the coast of Tokyo Bay is a densely populated industrial zone, part of the Keihin Industrial Zone. In contrast, the western districts in the Tama Hills consist largely of residential areas for commuters in the Tokyo / Yokohama region. Wards. Kawasaki has seven wards ("ku"): Adjacent cities and towns. In the northeast, Kawasaki borders the Special wards of Tokyo (starting at Tokyo Bay) Ōta and Setagaya, in the northwest the cities (-shi) belonging to Tokyo Prefecture (-shi) Komae, Chofu, Machida, Inagi , Tama enclose the place. The opposite southwest side is entirely occupied by the districts of Tsurumi, Kōhoku, Tsuzuki and Aoba in the city of Yokohama. With the completion of the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line, the city of Kisarazu, located on the opposite side of the Tokyo Bay in Chiba Prefecture, also became a neighbor in December 1997. Water. Two rivers cross the urban area. The Tama unites with the tributaries Misawa, Yamashita, Gotanda, Nikaryō main river and Hirase; Katahira, Asao, Shimpukuji, Arima, E, Shibu and Yabumi flow into the Tsurumi. The land on the coast of the city is crossed  by a network of canals (Tama Canal, Suehiro Canal, Chidori Canal, Yakō Canal, Daishi Canal, Mizue Canal, Shiohama Canal, Iriesaki Canal, Asano Canal, Ikegami Canal, Minami-Watarida Canal, Tanabe Canal, Shiraishi Canal and the Sakai Canal). In addition, the historic Nikaryō Yōsui canal still exists in the hinterland. Politics and government. Kawasaki is governed by Mayor Norihiko Fukuda, an independent elected on 27 October 2013. The city assembly has 63 elected members. Mayor Fukuda was re-elected to a second term in office on 22 October 2017 with support from LDP and Kōmeitō against former municipal MP Akiko Yoshizawa and  KPJ-supported former primary school teacher Hirokazu Ichiko. The 60-member city parliament of Kawasaki was re-elected in the unified elections in April 2019. The LDP remained the strongest with 19 seats. Kawasaki was in June 2008 the second Japanese "government-designated city" (seirei shitei toshi) after Hiroshima, which allowed foreigners to participate in municipal referendums. In the 105-member prefectural parliament of Kanagawa, the districts of Kawasaki used as constituencies together choose 18 deputies. For the House of Representatives (Japan), Kawasaki comprises the constituencies Kanagawa 9 (in the west), 10 (in the east) and 18 (in the middle ). In the 2017 election, these went unchanged to Liberal Democrats Kazunori Tanaka and Daishirō Yamagiwa and ex-Democrat Hirofumi Ryū for the Kibō no Tō (Party of Hope, later to the Mirai Nippon faction). Economy. Fujitsu's Main Branch is located in Nakahara-ku. It was formerly Fujitsu's headquarters. Kawasaki has several factories and development bases of the companies of heavy industry (e.g., JFE Group, Nippon Oil Corporation) and high technology (Fujitsu, NEC Corporation, Toshiba, Dell Japan and Sigma Corporation). International relations. Twin cities. Kawasaki is twinned with the following cities in Japan, worldwide, across the world, and on  the entire Earth.