Ikeda

Ikeda is a city in the northwest of Osaka Prefecture in Japan, on the northern part of the Osaka Plain, and forms a suburb of Osaka within the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe metropolitan area. The area was part of ancient Settsu Province and was once called Kureha no Sato. A castle of the Settsu Ikeda clan stood here until Araki Murashige defeated the clan in 1574, and in the Edo period the area was famous for Ikeda charcoal, prized in the tea ceremony, and for Ikeda sake. The village became a town in 1935 and a city in 1939 as a commuter town developed by the Hankyu Railway, whose founder Kobayashi Ichizo lived there. Daihatsu has its headquarters in the city, along with many Hankyu group companies. Ikeda covers only about 22 square kilometres, but had around 103,000 residents in 2023.