Kakogawa, Hyōgo

Kakogawa is a city in southern Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, in the eastern part of the Harima Plain, with its central area spreading over the east bank of the Kako River estuary. A large portion of the city is land reclaimed from the Seto Inland Sea and is mostly devoted to heavy industry, so the southern part of the city, with its industrial areas and large retailers, looks completely different from the mostly rural northern part. It lies within the Hanshin Industrial Area and the Harima Seaside Industrial Area and is a center for steel mills, refineries and chemical processing, with Kobe Steel's Kakogawa Steel Works a major employer. In the Sengoku period it developed as a castle town and in the Edo period as a post station on the San'yodo highway.