Ten Japanese Cities from Hakodate to Kitakyushu

Hakodate was Japan's first port opened to foreign trade, in 1854 under the Convention of Kanagawa. The Great Fire of 1934 destroyed around two-thirds of its buildings, and the Hokkaido Shinkansen now reaches it through the undersea Seikan Tunnel.

Sendai grew up around the castle of the feudal lord Date Masamune in the early seventeenth century. Known as the City of Trees for its zelkova-lined boulevards, it is the largest city in the Tohoku region, with about 1.1 million people in 2023.

Niigata is the capital and most populous city of its prefecture and the most populous city on the west coast of Honshu. It faces the Sea of Japan and Sado Island, and is the second most populous city in the Chubu region after Nagoya.

Toyama sits on the Sea of Japan coast of central Honshu, about 200 kilometers north of Nagoya. Its area of roughly 1,241 square kilometers is large for a prefectural capital, and the national government has designated it an environmental model city.

Maebashi is the capital of Gunma Prefecture in the northern Kanto region, with about 335,000 people in 2020. It calls itself the City of Water, Greenery and Poets, and the poet Sakutaro Hagiwara was born there.

Fukui was devastated in World War II and again by an earthquake in 1948, and was nicknamed Phoenix City to symbolize its rebirth. Most of its people live in a small central area, while the wider city takes in rural plains and mountains.

Chiba lies about 40 kilometers east of central Tokyo on Tokyo Bay and became a government-ordinance city in 1992. It hosts the Makuhari Messe convention center and sits close to Narita International Airport and Tokyo Disney Resort.

Gifu held a strategic place in the Sengoku period, when warlords including Oda Nobunaga used the area as a base, and Nobunaga gave the region the name it carries today. It later became a post station on the Nakasendo highway and part of the Chukyo area around Nagoya.

Tsu is the capital of Mie Prefecture and its second largest city by population, with about 275,000 people in 2021. Its concentration of national government offices and educational facilities makes it the prefecture's administrative and educational center.

Kitakyushu was formed in 1963 by merging five industrial cities on the strait between Kyushu and Honshu. It became a leading center of steel and heavy industry, and was later recognized internationally for its recovery from industrial pollution.