Pinus Ponderosa

Hirado (平戸市, Hirado-shi) is a city located in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. As of 1 June 2024, the city had an estimated population of 28,172, and a population density of 120 people per km².^[1] The total area of the city is 235.12 km² (90.78 sq mi)

Geography

Hirado City occupies the northern part of Nagasaki Prefecture, the northwestern tip of the Kitamatsuura Peninsula, Hirado Island, which lies to the west of the peninsula across the Hirado Strait, Ikitsuki Island, which lies to the northwest of Hirado Island, Takushima Island, which lies directly north of Hirado Island, and Matoyama-Oshima Island, which lies directly north of Tsushima. It is located about 25 kilometers northwest of Sasebo City and about 80 kilometers north-northwest of Nagasaki City. The Hirado Bridge connects Hirado Island to the Kyushu mainland, and the Ikitsuki Bridge connects Hirado Island to Ikitsuki Island.

The western end of Hirado Island is west of Kōzakihana, the westernmost point of Kyushu, and is the westernmost of all areas that can be traveled between the mainland of Japan (Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu) or the mainland of Japan by land transportation alone.

Surrounding municipalities

Nagasaki Prefecture

• Sasebo
• Matsuura

Climate

Hirado has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen:Cfa) with hot summers and cool winters. Precipitation is significant throughout the year, but is much higher in the summer, although the relatively low latitude and its coastal location the city receives snow in small quantities but enough to "mark" the winter every year despite being in 33 ° N receives intrusions from the Arctic cold of the Siberia air combined with the humidity of the Sea of Japan.^[2]

Demographics

Per Japanese census data, the population of Hirado is as shown below:

Historical population

Year	Pop.	±%
1940	53,473	—
1950	69,121	+29.3%
1960	67,880	−1.8%
1970	55,661	−18.0%
1980	50,849	−8.6%
1990	46,572	−8.4%
2000	41,586	−10.7%
2010	34,905	−16.1%
2020	29,365	−15.9%

History

Hirado has been a port of call for ships between the East Asian mainland and Japan since the Nara period. During the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, the local Matsuura clan held the rights to trade with Korea and with Song-dynasty China. During the Sengoku and early Edo periods, Hirado's role as a center of foreign trade increased, especially vis-à-vis Ming-dynasty China and the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC). The Portuguese arrived in Japan in 1543; after the Battle of Fukuda Bay in 1561 the Portuguese stayed for a few more years until they settled in the city of Nagasaki in 1571. The English and Dutch initially reached Japan at the beginning of the 17th century. The first step in the profitable Dutch-Japanese trading relationship was the Shōgun's grant of a trading pass (handelspas) in 1609.^[5] In 1613, the British ship Clove arrived in Japan and its Captain John Saris was able to gain the shogunate's permission to establish in Hirado a commercial house of the British East India Company. However, the company soon came to consider this outpost to be unprofitable, especially due to their inability to obtain Japanese raw silk for import to China. Therefore, the British closed their factory in 1623, voluntarily leaving the Dutch as the sole European presence.^[6]

At its maximum extent, the Dutch trading center covered the whole area of present-day Sakikata Park.^[7] In 1637 and in 1639, stone warehouses were constructed, and the Dutch builders incorporated these dates into the stonework. However, the Tokugawa shogunate disapproved of the use of any Christian year dates, and therefore demanded the immediate destruction of these two structures.^[8] This failure to comply with strict sakoku practices was then used as one of the Shogunate's rationales for forcing the Dutch traders to abandon Hirado for the more constricting confines of Dejima, a small artificial island in the present-day city of Nagasaki.^[8] The last VOC Opperhoofd or Kapitan at Hirado and the first one at Dejima was François Caron, who oversaw the transfer in 1641.^[9][10] However, modern research indicated that this incident might actually have been an excuse for the Shogunate to take the Dutch trade away from the Hirado clan.^[8] The stone warehouse from 1639 that was torn down was reconstructed back to its original form in 2011.^[11]

During the Edo period, Hirado was the seat of the Hirado Domain. Hirado Castle is today a historical and architectural landmark.

Following the Meiji restoration, the town of Hirado and the villages of Hirado, Nakano, Shishi, Himosashi, Nakatsura, Tsuyoshi, Shijiki, Tahibira, Minami-Tabira, Ikitsuki and Oshima were established with the creation of the modern municipalities system on April 1, 1889. The village and town of Hirado merged on April 1, 1925. Ikitsuki was raised to town status on April 17, 1940. On April 1, 1954 Tabira and Minami-Tabira merged to form the town of Tabira. On January 1, 1955 - Hirado Town, and the villages of Nakano, Shishi, Himosashi, Nakatsura, Tsuyoshi, and Shijiki merged to form the city of Hirado. The city expanded by merging on October 1, 2005, with the neighboring towns of Tabira, Ikitsuki, and the village of Ōshima. The local economy is dominated by agriculture, fishing and food processing.

Government

Hirado has a mayor-council form of government with a directly elected mayor and a unicameral city council of 18 members. Hirado contributes one member to the Nagasaki Prefectural Assembly. In terms of national politics, the city is part of the Nagasaki 4th district of the lower house of the Diet of Japan.

Economy

The economy of Hirado is heavily dependent on commercial fishing, agriculture and tourism.

Education

Hirado has 15 public elementary schools and eight public junior high schools, and three public high schools operated by the Nagasaki Prefectural Board of Education.

Transportation

Railways

Matsuura Railway - Nishi-Kyūshū Line

• Higashi-Tabira - Naka-Tabira - Tabira-Hiradoguchi - Nishi-Tabira

Highways

• Nishi-Kyūshū Expressway
• National Route 204
• National Route 383

Twin towns – Sister cities

Hirado has one sister city in Japan and one sister city and one friendship city outside Japan.^[12]

• Zentsūji, Kagawa, Japan (sister city)^[12]
• Nan'an, Fujian, China (friendship city)^[12]
• Noordwijk, South Holland, Netherlands (sister city)^[13] (used to be with Noordwijkerhout, which lost its municipal status in 2019 when it merged with Noordwijk)

Local attractions

• Hirado Dutch Trading Post, National Historic Site
• Matsura Historical Museum
• Hirado Castle

Notable residents of Hirado

• William Adams (1564–1620): Miura Anjin (三浦按針: "the pilot of Miura"), an English navigator and senior advisor to the Tokugawa shogunate, resided in Hirado during the 1610s and died there. He was the model for the character of John Blackthorne in James Clavell's novel Shōgun (1975).
• Camillus Costanzo (1571–1622): Italian Jesuit martyr. Burnt alive in Hirado.^[14]
• Willem Verstegen (1612–1659): merchant of the Dutch East India Company
• Richard Cocks (1565–1624): merchant of the British East India Company.
• Tagawa Matsu (1601–1646): wife of Zheng Zhilong, mother of Koxinga and Shichizaemon
• Zheng Zhilong (1604–1661): Chinese merchant and pirate, father of Koxinga
• Li Dan (d. 1625): Chinese merchant
• Koxinga (1624–1662): hero in mainland China, Taiwan and Ming general. Born in Hirado.
• Inagaki Manjiro (1861–1908): Diplomat. Born in Hirado.
• Ryusaku Yanagimoto (1894–1942): captain of the Sōryū in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II
• Kazuya Maekawa (1968–): former football player and current coach

Notes

References

• de Winter, Michiel. (2006). "VOC in Japan: Betrekkingen tussen Hollanders en Japanners in de Edo-periode, tussen 1602-1795" ("VOC in Japan: Relations between the Dutch and Japanese in the Edo-period, between 1602-1795"). (in Dutch)
• Edo-Tokyo Museum exhibition catalog. (2000). A Very Unique Collection of Historical Significance: The Kapitan (the Dutch Chief) Collection from the Edo Period—The Dutch Fascination with Japan. Catalog of "400th Anniversary Exhibition Regarding Relations between Japan and the Netherlands", a joint-project of the Edo-Tokyo Museum, the City of Nagasaki, the National Museum of Ethnology, the National Natuurhistorisch Museum" and the National Herbarium of the Netherlands in Leiden, the Netherlands. Tokyo.
• Satow, Ernest Mason, ed. (1900). The Voyage of Captain John Saris to Japan, 1613. London: Hakluyt Society...Link to digitized version from the collection of the University of California

External links

• Hirado City official website
• The Dutch Trading Post in Hirado
• Hirado City Tourism Association
• Geographic data related to Hirado, Nagasaki at OpenStreetMap