Sōka

Sōka is a city in the southeast corner of Saitama Prefecture, about 30 kilometres from downtown Tokyo, with Adachi Ward of Tokyo on its southern border. It lies in the centre of the Kantō Plain on mostly low ground at an elevation of only three metres above sea level, and the Ayase River that crosses it was long subject to flooding despite flood control works begun in the Edo period. Sōka developed as a post station on the Nikkō Kaidō highway from 1630, became a town with the modern municipal system in 1889 and was later raised to city status. New towns and large public housing complexes drove rapid population growth from the 1960s, and in 2004 the city was proclaimed a tokureishi with greater local autonomy. In 2021 it had an estimated 249,645 residents on 27.46 square kilometres, and it promotes itself as a town of greenery and water.