Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama

Hodogaya Ward is located in eastern Kanagawa Prefecture, and near the geographic center of the city of Yokohama. The area is largely flatland, with scattered small hills.

The area around present-day Hodogaya has been inhabited for thousands of years. Archaeologists have found stone tools from the Japanese Paleolithic period and ceramic shards from the Jōmon period at numerous locations in the area. Under the Nara period Ritsuryō system, it became part of Tachibana District and Tsutsuki District in Musashi Province. By the Heian period it was part of a huge shōen controlled by Ise Shrine and administered by the Hangaya clan, a subsidiary of the Hatakeyama clan. By the Kamakura period, the Hatakeyama clan ruled as local warlords until their territories were seized by the Later Hōjō clan from Odawara in the late Muromachi period. After the defeat of the Hōjō at the Battle of Odawara, the territory came under the control of Tokugawa Ieyasu. It was administered as tenryō territory controlled directly by the Tokugawa shogunate, but administered through various hatamoto. The area prospered in the Edo period as Hodogaya-juku, a post station on the Tōkaidō connecting Edo with Kyoto.

After the Meiji Restoration, the area was transferred to the new Kanagawa Prefecture, and Hodogaya Town was established on April 1, 1889, two years after the completion of Hodogaya Station on the Tōkaidō Main Line railway connecting Tokyo with Osaka. Hodogaya suffered severe damage from the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. On October 1, 1927 it was annexed by the neighboring city of Yokohama, becoming Hodogaya Ward. The area suffered greatly again during the Yokohama air raid of May 29, 1945.

In a major administrative reorganization of October 1, 1969, Hodogaya gave up a large area the new Asahi Ward, and gained a portion of the territory of Kōhoku Ward.

Hodogaya Ward is largely a regional commercial center and bedroom community for central Yokohama and Tokyo. Formerly a number of chemical, glass and electronics companies maintained factories in Hodogaya, but with the exception of the head offices of Furakawa Battery Company Ltd., all have relocated to less densely populated areas. There is some residual agriculture in Hodogaya Ward, primarily potatoes and cabbage.

University:

• Yokohama National University

Senior high schools:

• Hodogaya High School
• Kōryō High School
• Sakuragaoka High School
• Shōkō High School
• Yokohama Seifū High School

Junior high schools:

Primary schools:

• Setsuko Hara, actress
• Kanako Mitsuhashi, voice actress
• Risa Niigaki, singer
• Akira Terao, actor
• Hiroshi Yamamoto, Olympic medal archer
• Masahiro Matsuoka, idol

• Kato, Yuzo. Yokohama Past and Present. Yokohama City University (1990).

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama.

• Hodogaya Ward Office Official Website in English
• Geographic data related to Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama at OpenStreetMap