Shimoina-gun (Nagano)

Shimoina-gun ( Japanese. 下伊那郡 , literally: "District Unter-Ina") is a district ( gun ) in the south of Nagano Prefecture on the Japanese main island of Honshū . It has 57,772 inhabitants (as of October 1, 2019) on an area of 1,270.43 km². Three cities ( machi ) and ten villages ( mura ) belong to it. These are the cities of Anan , Matsukawa , Takamori and the villages of Achi , Hiraya , Neba , Ōshika , Shimojō , Takagi , Tenryū , Toyooka , Urugi and Yasuoka . With currently 13 parishes, Shimoina-gun is not only the county with the most parishes in Nagano Prefecture, but also in all of Japan.

history

Shimoina-gun was created on January 14, 1879 by dividing the old Ina-gun into Shimoina-gun and Kamiina-gun ("Ober-Ina"). The seat of the then district administration was Iida . As of April 1, 1889, a town and 41 villages belonged to Shimoina-gun. On April 1, 1937, after a merger, Iida became an independent city ( shi ). Before the major territorial reform of the 1950s, Shimoina-gun belonged to 42 villages. After the major territorial reform, only four towns and 19 villages belonged to Shimoina-gun since April 1, 1960. The number of municipalities continued to decline through further minor regional reforms. The last one in Shimoina-gun took place on March 31, 2009.