Wakayama

Wakayama (wäkä`yämä), city (1990 pop. 396,553), capital of Wakayama prefecture, SW Honshu, Japan, on the Inland Sea. It is a railroad hub and a manufacturing center where petroleum, cotton and flannel textiles, iron, and steel are produced. The city has a castle built in 1585 by Hideyoshi. Wakayama prefecture (1990 pop. 1,094,933), 1,824 sq mi (4,724 sq km), yields fish, lumber, and agricultural products. It is a major resort area with many hot springs, temples, and beaches.

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Wakayama

an industrial city in S Japan, on S Honshu. Pop.: 391 008 (2002 est.)

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Wakayama 

prefecture in Japan, in the southwest of the island of Honshu. Area, 4,700 sq km. Population, 1,035,000 (1967), of which over 50 percent is urban. Administrative center, the city of Wakayama.

Wakayama is an agrarian-forest region of the Kinki economic area. Rice, grown on irrigated lands, is planted on over 50 percent of the cultivated area. Orchard cultivation (citrus fruits—mandarins, persimmons) has commercial importance. Cattle, swine, and fowl are bred. There is sericulture, lumbering, maritime industry, and mining of silver, copper ore, and pyrite. The output of Wakayama’s manufacturing industry accounts for somewhat more than 1 percent of Japanese national production. There is ferrous metallurgy (30 percent of the value of the industrial produce of the prefecture in 1966); oil refining (27 percent); and textile (15 percent), chemical (7 percent), and woodworking (7 percent) industry.

N. A. SMIRNOV