Higashikagawa City

Glove-making, brought home from Osaka.

Gloves, Tanatsugu Tatsukichi

Photo by Asturio Cantabrio (CC BY-SA 4.0)

01 ／ Yellowtail farming

After repeated failures,yellowtail thrived in Ado Pond.

Nozawa Wasaburo (野網和三郎), the third son of a fishing-boat owner in Hiketa (引田), kept trying with his father Sakichi's help, and in 1928 succeeded in the world's first commercial farming of yellowtail (hamachi, ハマチ) at Ado Pond (安戸池). At its peak in the 1950s-60s, up to 1,000 sightseers a day came to watch, and it remains the backbone of the prefecture's fisheries; Japan's aquaculture industry now tops 100 billion yen a year.

Succeeded in 1928
1,000 visitors a day (1950s-60s)
Industry tops 100 billion yen nationwide

02 ／ Stone walls

The Kita-ninomaru wallwas built in two tiers, top and bottom.

The Honmaru (本丸) keeps a nozura-zumi (野面積み) stone wall thought to be the castle's oldest. The Kita-ninomaru (北二の丸) wall is built in two tiers — about 2-3 m above and 5-6 m below — since builders of the time could not stack a single wall that high; the lower tier's gap-fill stones are packed more carefully than the Honmaru's. It became a National Historic Site in 2020.

Upper 2-3 m, lower 5-6 m
Nozura-zumi (Honmaru)
National Historic Site, 2020

03 ／ Shipping merchant

A mansion once marked for demolitionwas reborn as a town hub in 2005.

Izutsuya (井筒屋), a shipping merchant house of the Sano family founded in 1692, prospered trading between Kamigata and Edo and became the leading merchant house of eastern Sanuki (東讃). Left to decay and slated for demolition, it was bought and restored by the old town of Hiketa in 2001 after a resident-led preservation campaign, and opened to the public in 2005. In 2012 it received the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism's Tezukuri Kyodo Award.

Founded in 1692
Opened to the public in 2005
Tezukuri Kyodo Award, 2012

Living here

Harima-nada to the north, the Sanuki Mountains to the south, bordering Tokushima.

about 30,000 people

The city was formed in 2003 by the merger of Hiketa (引田町), Shirotori (白鳥町) and Ouchi (大内町) towns. The Sanuki Mountains (讃岐山脈) lie to the south and Harima-nada (播磨灘) to the northeast, with small rivers such as the Umayado and Yoda opening onto the plain where the town centres sit. The only trains are local JR Kotoku Line services — no shinkansen or limited express stops here. The gateway is Sanuki-Shirotori Station, near city hall.

People living here: 28,279people
Area: 152.86km²
Households: 11,931households
Rent (average for rentals): 41,552yen
Healthcare: 3 hospitals ／ 20 clinics

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

Children waiting for childcare: —10 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.

Higashikagawa City in Japan34.244°N 134.359°E

Territory of Higashikagawa City

Boundaries: National Land Numerical Information (N03)

North to south

14.2km

Kagawa Prefecture: さぬき市
Tokushima Prefecture: 阿波市, 板野町, 上板町, 鳴門市

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

Higashikagawa City isthis kind of town.

01Glove-making technology that began in Osaka in 1888 was brought home by Tanatsugu Tatsukichi, a native of Shirotori, and the city is still known for glove-making today (Kagawa Prefecture as a whole holds an 85.6% national share in knit gloves and 91.2% in sports leather gloves)
02In 1928, Nozawa Wasaburo, the third son of a fishing-boat owner in Hiketa, succeeded in the world's first commercial yellowtail farming at Ado Pond, laying the foundation for today's marine finfish aquaculture industry
03Hiketa still has Hiketa Castle, built entirely of stone walls (a National Historic Site since 2020), and Sanshu Izutsu Yashiki, a preserved shipping-merchant's mansion (winner of the 2012 Tezukuri Kyodo Award)

See the town as it is now.

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

If something caught your eye, ask the town itself.

Higashikagawa City official site ↗Wikipedia ↗