Japan Cities Educational Geography Posters
for social studies classrooms and homeschoolers.

Hiroshima is the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon. The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M. on August 6, 1945, near the end of World War II. 80,000 people were directly killed, by the end of the year to total casualties were between 90,000 and 140,000.

Sadako Sasaki was born in Hiroshima and survived the bomb - she is noted for her folding almost 1000 cranes as her wish to be healed from the radiation poisoning that did claim her life in 1955.

FYI ~ Hiroshima was struck by a typhoon on September 17, 1945 that further damaged the city.

• “At, exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.” — Opening sentence, Hiroshima, 1946 , author John Hersey

The port city of Kobe is the fifth-largest city in Japan.

Kyoto, located on Honshu Island of Japan, was the capital of imperial Japan, from 794 to 1869.

Kyoto, one of the best preserved cities in Japan, has 2000 religious places - 1600 Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto shrines - as well as palaces and gardens.

Nagasaki, on the island of Kyushu, Japan, was founded by the Portuguese in the second half of the 16th century, on the site of a small fishing village.

During World War II, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made Nagasaki the second and, to date, last city in the world to experience a nuclear attack.

Nagoya

Osaka is the third largest city in Japan, after Tokyo and Yokohama.

Osaka is historically the commercial capital of Japan: beginning in the feudal Edo period it was the center of trading for rice, creating the first modern future exchange market in the world.

Notable people associated with Osaka include Yasunari Kawabata.

Sapporo is known worldwide for hosting the 1972 Winter Olympics, the first ever winter games held in Asia.

The city also hosts the annual Yuki Matsuri, internationally referred to as the Sapporo Snow Festival.

Tokyo, the capital of Japan and located on Honshu Island, is an alpha+ world city, part of the world's most populous metropolitan area, the world's largest metropolitan economy, and the world's most expensive city for expartriate employees.

Tokyo was originally a small fishing village named Edo. its name was changed in 1868 to Tokyo to reflect the East Asian tradition of including the word “capital” in the name of the capital city (also Beijing and Seoul).

Tokyo sits in the shadow of Mount Fuji, an active stratovolcano that last erupted in 1707–08; the last major earthquake was in 1923 with the loss of over 140,000 lives.

Yokohama, the second largest city in Japan, is located on Tokyo Bay at the southern end of Honshu Island.

In 1853–54, U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry arrived at Yokohama with a fleet of American warships, demanding that the Japanese open several ports for commerce.