Sakai City

Five- and six-sided rock columns run 1 km.

Tojinbo

Photo by 雷太 (CC BY 2.0)

01 ／ Jetty

For a port choked with sand,a Dutchman laid a wall of stone.

To rescue a harbour made shallow by silt from the Kuzuryu River (九頭竜川), wealthy Mikuni merchants petitioned the prefecture and the government, and Escher, a Dutch engineer employed by the Home Ministry, drew up the design. Work began in 1878, and in 1882 a stone jetty 511 m long was finished. Its foundation is sodachinsho (粗朶沈床), mattresses of bundled branches, and rock from Tojinbo (東尋坊) went into it too. It is an Important Cultural Property.

Completed in 1882
511 m long
Important Cultural Property, 2003

02 ／ Star chart

The Muromachi sky's 331 constellations,drawn on one scroll with numbers and names.

The Ten no Zu (天之図) handed down at Takidan-ji (瀧谷寺) is a single hanging scroll, with a poem naming the constellations above and a chart of the celestial sphere below. It shows 331 constellations, each star given a number or name. The Agency for Cultural Affairs calls it the only surviving star chart dating back to the middle Muromachi period. The same temple also keeps Sakai's only National Treasure, a gilt-bronze kei (磬) gong.

331 constellations
Important Cultural Property, 1989
The city's only National Treasure

03 ／ Letters

The "O-Sen" in "don't make O-Sen cry"later ruled Maruoka Castle.

Honda Shigetsugu, a retainer of Tokugawa Ieyasu, wrote to his wife from camp: "A brief note: mind the fire, don't make O-Sen cry, keep the horses fed." O-Sen was Honda Narishige, later lord of Maruoka Castle, where a stone carved with the letter stands under the keep's roof of stone tiles. Inspired by it, the city has invited letters of 1 to 40 characters every year since 1993, and received 35,152 in 2025.

Every year since 1993
1 to 40 characters
35,152 letters

Living here

From seaside Mikuni to upland Takeda: 50 minutes by car.

about 90,000 people

The city was formed in 2006 when the four towns of Mikuni, Maruoka, Harue and Sakai merged. The Sakai Plain is one of the prefecture's leading rice-growing areas, and Takeda in the east is the city's only mountain district. The city's gateway is Maruoka Station on the Hapi-Line Fukui, a 10-minute walk from the city hall. Despite its name, the station stands in the former town of Sakai, some way from Maruoka Castle.

People living here: 88,481people
Area: 209.67km²
Households: 31,067households
Rent (average for rentals): 42,868yen
Healthcare: 4 hospitals ／ 47 clinics

Area and habitable land at the same scalee-Stat B1101 / B1103

Children waiting for childcare: —32 nurseries and similar
Home purchase subsidy: —
Average annual temperature: —

These 3 items are waiting on a nationwide data source. We do not fill them with estimates.

Shape

Borders 5 municipalities across 1 prefectures.

Sakai City in Japan36.167°N 136.231°E

Territory of Sakai City

Boundaries: National Land Numerical Information (N03)

North to south

17.2km

Fukui Prefecture: あわら市, 福井市, 永平寺町, 勝山市
Ishikawa Prefecture: 加賀市

Travel times per leg are not published by the municipality, so they are not shown.

Sakai City isthis kind of town.

01At Tojinbo, columns of rock formed as lava cooled about 13 million years ago run for about 1 km along the shore
02At the mouth of the Kuzuryu River, a Meiji-era stone jetty designed by a Dutch engineer still does its job for the port
03It has Takidan-ji, which keeps a mid-Muromachi star chart, and the Ippitsu Keijo Prize, named after the letter that says "don't make O-Sen cry"

See the town as it is now.

Source: Wikidata (P2002, P2003, P2013, P2397)

If something caught your eye, ask the town itself.

Sakai City official site ↗Wikipedia ↗