Kammon Street
| Kammon Street | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
||
| Connects waters | Japanese sea | |
| with water | Seto Inland Sea | |
| Separates land mass | Honshu | |
| of land mass | Kyushu | |
| Data | ||
| Geographical location | 33 ° 56 '49 " N , 130 ° 56' 48" E | |
|
||
| Smallest width | 600 m | |
| Coastal towns | Shimonoseki , Kitakyushu | |
| bridges | Kammon Bridge | |
The Kammon Strait (also Kanmon Strait, Japanese 関門 海峡 , Kanmon-kaikyō , also Shimonoseki Street ( 下 関 海峡 , Shimonoseki-kaikyō )) is a sea road in southwestern Japan , which the main islands of Honshū ( prefecture Yamaguchi ) and Kyūshū ( Fukuoka Prefecture ). It is the direct link between the Sea of Japan and the Seto Inland Sea .
At the narrowest point, the Hayatomo Strait ( 早 鞆 ノ 瀬 戸 , Hayatomo no Seto , 33 ° 57 ′ 49 ″ N , 130 ° 57 ′ 37 ″ E ), the banks of the Kammon Strait are only 600 meters apart. The strait silts up at a rate of around 15 cm per year and has to be dredged regularly. The sea area around the eastern bank of Kyūshū is called Mekari ( 和 布 刈 ) and that of the western bank of Honshū is called Dannoura ( 壇 ノ 浦 ).
Origin of name
On Honshū there is Shimonoseki ( 下 関 ), which adds the syllable Kan to the name of the street, and on Kyūshū Kitakyūshū , from whose formerly independent district Moji ( 門 司 ) the syllable mon comes.
Population of the area
The total population of the region is about 1.3 million if you add Kitakyushu (about 1 million people) and Shimonoseki (about 300,000 people) together.
reachability
Kitakyushu Airport opened on March 16, 2006, and it is hoped that it will further boost tourism and trade in the area. The material recovered from the dredging of the strait was used as land for the airport.
tourism
Fireworks Festival
The Kammon Street summer fireworks display has been held every year on August 13th since 1988, and is watched by more than a million spectators from both banks of the strait. At the 18th festival on August 13, 2005, 13,000 fireworks were set off .
Boat trips and sightseeing flights
From Moji-ko you can visit the road by boat and helicopter.
In October 2005 the Zeppelin NT also passed Moji on its trip to Japan.
Transportation across the strait
Originally, the strait could only be crossed by ferry. Today there is also the Kammon Bridge over the Hayatomo Strait with an expressway. The most important connection, however, is several tunnels for the Shinkansen , regular railroad trains, cars and even a pedestrian tunnel at the narrowest part of the road.
The first railway tunnel was opened on November 15, 1942, the road tunnel on March 9, 1958. The Kammon Bridge has been open to vehicles since November 14, 1973. The Shinkansen tunnel followed on March 10, 1975.
The Kammon Strait is used by many cargo ships as the shortest route from Korea and China to Osaka and Tokyo .
history
The historic naval battle of Dan-no-ura took place in the street on April 25, 1185 , in which the Minamoto clan defeated the then ruling Taira clan. This key event ended the Gempei War (1180–1185) for rule over Japan.
In 1864, with the bombardment of Shimonoseki , the British forcibly opened the road blocked by the Japanese by destroying the coastal batteries.
The Treaty of Shimonoseki on April 17, 1895 ended the Sino-Japanese War .
Web links
- Kammon Street Guide (Japanese)