Hitachinaka

Hitachinaka is a city in Ibaraki Prefecture in Japan, lying slightly northeast of the centre of the prefecture and east of the prefectural capital Mito. It combines a lowland area around the Naka River in the south with a stretch of Pacific coast in the east. The city was created on 1 November 1994 by merging two cities, Nakaminato and Katsuta, which had themselves been formed in 1954; Nakaminato was a commercial fishing port and Katsuta grew as a company town for Hitachi, and both were bombed or shelled during the Second World War because of their factories. Its name is written in hiragana rather than the traditional kanji, which makes it one of the so-called hiragana cities. As of mid 2020 it had an estimated 154,663 residents, and its population has levelled off after a long period of growth.