Niigata prefecture

Niigata-ken ; 新潟県
Basic data
Administrative headquarters :	Niigata
Region :	Chūbu
Main island :	Honshu
Area :	12,584.24 km²
Water content:	0.2 %
Residents :	2,222,004 ; (October 1, 2019)
Population density :	177 inhabitants per km²
Counties :	9
Municipalities :	30th
ISO 3166-2 :	JP-15
Governor :	Hideyo Hanazumi
Website:	www.pref.niigata.lg.jp
Symbols
Prefecture flag :
Prefecture tree :	Camellia japonica var. Decumbens
Prefecture flower :	tulip
Vogel prefecture :	Nipponibis
Prefecture song :	Kenminka; ("song of the citizens of the prefecture")

The Niigata prefecture ( Jap. 新潟県 , Niigata-ken ) is a prefecture of Japan . It is located in the Chūbu region on the coast of the Sea of Japan on the main island of Honshū and comprises over 90 other islands, including Sado-shima, one of the largest islands in the country. The city of the same name Niigata (Niigata-shi) is the seat of the prefecture administration.

Niigata is famous for its excellent rice and accordingly also for its sake .

history

Until the Meiji Restoration , the provinces of Japan Echigo and Sado were in today's prefecture . The latter, as well as from 1843 a Shogunate domain ( bakuryō ) around the city of Niigata were directly from the Tokugawa controlled. The principalities (-han) in the province of Echigo in the late Edo period included Murakami under the Naitō , Nagaoka under the Makino , Shibata under the Mizoguchi and Takada (with the prince's seat in today's city of Jōetsu ) under the Sakakibara .

In the Meiji Restoration, the former Niigata shogunate administration ( Niigata bugyōsho ) became the [city] prefecture (-fu) Echigo , from which the prefecture (-ken) Kashiwazaki was later temporarily separated. Echigo was renamed Niigata in the same year and converted into an ordinary prefecture (-ken) in 1869 . The Sado prefecture emerged from the Sado shogunate administration and was later renamed Aikawa. After the abolition of the principalities , Niigata and Kashiwazaki were united with the prefectures that emerged from the principalities in Echigo Province. In 1873 Kashiwazaki Prefecture was incorporated into Niigata, and in 1876 Aikawa. With the transfer of the district (gun) Higashi-Kambara ("East Kambara ") from Fukushima in 1886, Niigata essentially received its present-day borders.

Before the modernization of the prefecture, district and municipality regulations from 1889, Niigata had a city district (-ku) , the administrative seat Niigata, and 18 districts. In 1889 the capital Niigata was named the first independent city (-shi) in the prefecture, before other cities followed, beginning with Nagaoka-shi in 1906 in the 20th century. After the major territorial reforms of the post-war period, there are still nine counties in Niigata today, but most of them only consist of a single municipality.

In the 1970s and 1980s, most of the kidnappings of Japanese citizens by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea took place on the Niigata coast .

On October 23, 2004, a severe earthquake struck Niigata: The Chūetsu quake reached a level of 6+ on the Japanese intensity scale and hit the area around Ojiya in particular . Without electricity and gas, thousands spent weeks in private cars on large parking lots during the cold nights, safe from aftershocks. On July 16, 2007, the Niigata Chūetsu coastal earthquake took place.

politics

Political groups in the prefecture parliament
(as of May 21, 2019)

A total of 53 seats

LDP : 31
Mirai Niigata ("Future Niigata"; KDP , DVP , SDP etc.): 8
Liberal Niigata : 5
Kōmeitō : 2
KPY : 1
Non-attached: 6

Niigata's governor Ryūichi Yoneyama resigned in April 2018. In the new election on June 6, 2018 , the most important national government and opposition parties supported various candidates: Hideyo Hanazumi , former lieutenant governor and deputy head of the national government, who was supported by the LDP and Kōmeitō but was looking to distance himself from parties (and the scandalous Abe government) during the election campaign Coast Guard , with 49.6% of the vote narrowly prevailed against the former prefectural parliament member Chikako Ikeda (46.2%), who was supported by opposition parties (KDP, DVP, KPJ, LP, SDP). As in the 2016 gubernatorial election , the planned restart of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant was a key issue in the election. With around four percent of the vote, the independent Satoshi Annaka, who ran without recommendation from major parties, was a former city parliament member in Gosen , who positioned himself even more clearly than Ikeda as an opponent of nuclear power. The turnout rose to over 58%.

In the 53-member parliament, the LDP defended an absolute majority with 28 seats in the April 2019 elections .

In the national parliament , Niigata is represented by six directly elected members of the Shūgiin and one per partial election in the Sangiin , after the elections in 2016 , 2017 , 2019 and since then party reshuffles currently (as of August 2019) mostly opposition politicians, namely:

in the Shūgiin
- for the constituency Niigata 1 in the center of the capital Niigata Chinami Nishimura ( KDP , 5th term),
- for constituency 2 southwest of it on the coast and with the island of Sado Eiichirō Washio ( LDP , 5th term), ex-democrat, joined the LDP in 2019,
- for constituency 3 in the northeast Takahiro Kuroiwa (non-party / KDP parliamentary group, 3rd term, previously in the 2000s for Niigata in Sangiin),
- for constituency 4 with the interior south of the capital Makiko Kikuta (non-party / KDP parliamentary group, 6th term),
- for constituency 5 in the interior of Niigata from the south of the city of Nagaoka to the border with Gunma Hirohiko Izumida (LDP, 1st term of office), from 2004 to 2016 governor of Niigata, and
- for constituency 6 in the southwest Shūichi Takatori (LDP, 4th term), from 2018 Secretary of State for Agriculture for the Abe cabinet, and
in the Sangiin
- by 2022 Yūko Mori ( DVP , 3rd term) and
- until 2025 Sakura Uchikoshi (non-party and non-attached, 1st term of office), a lawyer who stood as a unity candidate for the center-left opposition in the 2019 election with an absolute majority against LDP incumbent Ichirō Tsukada (2018-19 MLIT State Secretary; a Son of Governor Jūichirō Tsukada ).

The family of ex-Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka , who was one of the most influential politicians of the LDP and thus of the country from the 1960s to the early 1980s ("shadow shogun") and its extensive political and economic network in Niigata around his support organization Etsuzankai cited as a prime example of how LDP dominance worked in the post-war decades, is no longer represented in parliament after Makiko Tanaka was voted out in 2012 and Naoki Tanaka in 2016.

Administrative division

With the introduction of today's municipal forms in 1889, Niigata was divided into 816 municipalities (including the first and initially only independent city the city of Niigata and another 48 cities belonging to the district) distributed over 17 districts.
The number of municipalities fell in almost 100 years from 417 (1920), over 179 (1955), 120 (1960) and 43 (2005) to currently (since April 2010) 30. The current breakdown shows 20 district-free ( -shi ) and six towns ( -machi ) and four villages ( -mura ) belonging to the district. The number of counties ( -gun ) is nine, eight of which consist of only one municipality each. Between 1951 and 1959, 14 municipalities were elevated to cities.
The administrative center Niigata is since April 2007 a ( "designated city" ), Jōetsu and Nagaoka are since 2007 an "exceptional city" ( Tokureishi ).

In the table below, the districts ( 郡 , - gun ) are shown in italics, below (indented) the small towns ( 町 , -machi ) and villages ( 村 , -mura ) within them. A dependency between rural district and small town can also be seen in the first three digits of the code (1st column). At the beginning of the table are the independent cities ( 市 , - shi ). In addition, the affiliation to the four "regions" ( 地方 , chihō ) is given in the last column .

List of municipalities in Niigata prefecture
code	Surname		Area (in km²)	population	Population density (inh / km²) ³	region
code	Rōmaji	Kanji	October 1, 2017 ¹	October 1, 2018 ²	October 1, 2015 ³
15100	Niigata- shi	新潟市	726.45	800,582	810.157	1115.23	Kaetsu-chihō
15202	Nagaoka- shi	長岡市	891.06	269.508	275.133	308.77	Chūetsu-chihō
15204	Sanjō- shi	三条市	431.97	96,482	99.192	229.63	Chūetsu-chihō
15205	Kashiwazaki- shi	柏崎市	442.03	83,826	86,833	196.44	Chūetsu-chihō
15206	Shibata- shi	新発田市	533.10	96,267	98,611	184.98	Kaetsu-chihō
15208	Ojiya -shi	小千谷市	155.19	35,142	36,498	235.18	Chūetsu-chihō
15209	Kamo- shi	加茂市	133.72	26,343	27,852	208.29	Chūetsu-chihō
15210	Tōkamachi- shi	十日町市	590.39	51,822	54,917	93.02	Chūetsu-chihō
15211	Mitsuke -shi	見附市	77.91	39,801	40,608	521.22	Chūetsu-chihō
15212	Murakami- shi	村上市	1174.26	59,137	62,442	53.18	Kaetsu-chihō
15213	Tsubame- shi	燕市	110.96	77,915	79,784	719.03	Kaetsu-chihō
15216	Itoigawa- shi	糸魚川市	746.24	42.111	44,162	59.18	Jōetsu-chihō
15217	Myōkō- shi	妙高市	445.63	31,685	33.199	74.50	Jōetsu-chihō
15218	Gosen- shi	五泉市	351.91	49.091	51,404	146.07	Kaetsu-chihō
15222	Joetsu- shi	上越市	973.81	191,835	196.987	202.28	Jōetsu-chihō
15223	Agano- shi	阿賀野市	192.74	41,728	43,415	225.25	Kaetsu-chihō
15224	Sado- shi	佐渡市	855.66	54,126	57,255	66.91	Sado-chiho
15225	Uonuma- shi	魚沼市	946.76	35,516	37,352	39.45	Chūetsu-chihō
15226	Minamiuonuma -shi	南魚沼市	584.55	56,689	58,568	100.19	Chūetsu-chihō
15227	Tainai- shi	胎内市	264.89	29,106	30.198	114.00	Kaetsu-chihō
15300	Kitakambara gun	北蒲原郡	37.58	14,025	14,040	373.60	Kaetsu-chihō
15307	Seirō-machi	聖籠町	37.58	14,025	14,040	373.60	Kaetsu-chihō
15340	Nishikambara gun	西蒲原郡	25.17	7,953	8,209	326.14	Kaetsu-chihō
15342	Yahiko-mura	弥彦村	25.17	7,953	8,209	326.14	Kaetsu-chihō
15360	Minamikambara gun	南蒲原郡	31.71	11,662	12,188	384.36	Chūetsu-chihō
15361	Tagami-machi	田上町	31.71	11,662	12,188	384.36	Chūetsu-chihō
15380	Higashikambara gun	東蒲原郡	952.89	10,632	11,680	12.26	Kaetsu-chihō
15385	Aga-machi	阿賀町	952.89	10,632	11,680	12.26	Kaetsu-chihō
15400	Santō-gun	三島郡	44.38	4243	4528	102.03	Chūetsu-chihō
15405	Izumozaki-machi	出雲崎町	44.38	4243	4528	102.03	Chūetsu-chihō
15460	Minamiuonuma-gun	南魚沼郡	357.29	7958	8046	22.52	Chūetsu-chihō
15461	Yuzawa-machi	湯沢町	357.29	7958	8046	22.52	Chūetsu-chihō
15480	Nakauonuma-gun	中魚沼郡	170.21	9410	10,029	58.92	Chūetsu-chihō
15482	Tsunan-machi	津南町	170.21	9410	10,029	58.92	Chūetsu-chihō
15500	Kariwa-gun	刈羽郡	26.27	4667	4775	181.77	Chūetsu-chihō
15504	Kariwa-mura	刈羽村	26.27	4667	4775	181.77	Chūetsu-chihō
15580	Iwafune gun	岩船郡	309.40	5795	6202	20.05	Kaetsu-chihō
15581	Sekikawa-mura	関川村	299.61	5431	5832	19.47	Kaetsu-chihō
15586	Awashimaura-mura	粟島浦村	9.78	364	370	37.83	Kaetsu-chihō

Shi-bu ( All Shi , proportion of urban districts)	市部	10629.25	2,168,712	2,224,567	209.29
Shi-bu ( All Shi , proportion of urban districts)	市部	1954.91	76,345	79,697	40.77

15000	Niigata-Ken (Niigata Prefecture)	新潟県	12584.15	2,245,057	2,304,264	183.11

¹ Area data from 2017
² Estimated population 2018
³ Results of the 2015 census

Biggest places

Current and former independent cities (-shi)
census results on October 1st
Census year	Residents
Census year	2015	2010	2005	2000
Niigata	810.157	811.901	785.134	501.431
Nagaoka	275.133	282,674	236.344	193,414
Jōetsu	196.987	203,899	208.082	134,751
Sanjō	99.192	102.292	104,749	84,447
Shibata	98,611	101.202	104,634	80.734
Kashiwazaki	86,833	91,451	94,648	88,418
Tsubame	79,784	81,876	43,255	43,480
Murakami	62,442	66,427	30,685	31,758
Minamiuonuma	58,568	61,624	63,329	-
Sado	57,255	62,727	67,386	-
Tōkamachi	54,917	58,911	62,058	43.002
Gosen	51,404	54,550	37,282	38,306
Itoigawa	44,162	47,702	49,844	32.003
Agano	43,415	45,560	47,043	-
Mitsuke	40,608	41,862	42,668	43,526
Uonuma	37,352	40,361	43,555	-
Ojiya	36,498	38,600	39,956	41,641
Myōkō	33.199	35,457	37,831	27,882
Tainai	30.198	31,424	32,813	-
Kamo	27,852	29,762	31,482	33,085
Niitsu	-	-	-	65,860
Toyosaka	-	-	-	48.997
Shirone	-	-	-	40,012
Tochio	-	-	23,168	24,704
Ryotsu	-	-	-	17,394

March 1, 2004 - The independent city of Ryōtsu forms the new independent city of Sado with nine municipalities .
April 1, 2004 - Four municipalities form the independent city of Agano .
November 1, 2004 - Two parishes form the independent city of Minamiuonuma .
November 1, 2004 - Six parishes form the independent city of Uonuma .
March 21, 2005 - The cities of Niitsu, Shirone and Toyosaka are incorporated into the city of Niigata .
April 1, 2005 - Two municipalities form the independent city of Arai , which at the same time changes its name to Myōkō .
September 1, 2005 - Two parishes form the independent city of Tainai .

Population development in the prefecture

Census population
Census year	Total population	male population	female population	Gender ratio men to 1000 women	Area in km²	Population density per km ²
1920	1,776,474	871,532	904.942	963	12578.64	141.2
1925	1,849,807	913,886	935.921	977	12578.64	147.1
1930	1,933,326	955.621	977.705	977	12578.64	153.7
1935	1,995,777	982.497	1,013,280	970	12578.05	158.7
1940	2,064,402	1,017,080	1,047,322	971	12578.05	164.1
1945	2,389,653	1,095,809	1,293,844	847	12578.05	190.0
1950	2,460,997	1,194,929	1,266,068	944	12570.46	195.8
1955	2,473,492	1,195,872	1,277,620	936	12575.33	196.7
1960	2,442,037	1,177,923	1,264,114	932	12575.33	194.2
1965	2,398,931	1,160,283	1,238,648	937	12575.38	190.8
1970	2,360,982	1,140,148	1,220,834	934	12577.06	187.7
1975	2,391,938	1,160,869	1,231,069	943	12577.37	190.2
1980	2,451,357	1,193,653	1,257,704	949	12578.30	194.9
1985	2,478,470	1,205,071	1,273,399	946	12578.62	197.0
1990	2,474,583	1,200,376	1,274,207	942	12581.62	196.7
1995	2,488,364	1,209,833	1,278,531	946	12581.75	197.8
2000	2,475,733	1,202,004	1,273,729	944	12582.37	196.8
2005	2,431,459	1,176,919	1,254,540	938	12583.32	193.2
2010	2,374,450	1,148,236	1,226,214	936	12583.81	188.7
2015	2,304,264	1,115,413	1,188,851	938	12584.10	183.1