Gojō

Gojo is a city in western Nara Prefecture, Japan, through which the Yoshino River flows west. Mostly mountainous, it has its city hall in a flat basin, with Mount Kongo, at 1,125 metres, to the north, and persimmon is a major fruit crop. The area belonged to ancient Yamato Province and holds many kofun burial mounds and old Shinto shrines. In the Edo period it was a castle town under direct Tokugawa control, and in the Bakumatsu period it was a site of the Tenchugumi incident. Gojo became a city in 1957 by merging neighbouring towns and villages, and absorbed more villages in 2005. Its population has been declining.