was a

village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...

located in Nishitsugaru District in western

Aomori Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan in the Tōhoku region. The prefecture's capital, largest city, and namesake is the city of Aomori (city), Aomori. Aomori is the northernmost prefecture on Japan's main island, Honshu, and is border ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. The village was situated on the west coast of

Tsugaru Peninsula The is a peninsula in Aomori Prefecture, at the northern end of Honshū island, Japan. The peninsula projects north into the Tsugaru Strait separating Honshū from Hokkaidō. The western coast is on the Sea of Japan, while on its eastern coast ...

, facing the

Sea of Japan The Sea of Japan is the marginal sea between the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin, the Korean Peninsula, and the mainland of the Russian Far East. The Japanese archipelago separates the sea from the Pacific Ocean. Like the Mediterranean Sea, it ...

History

The area was part of

Hirosaki Domain file:Hirosakijo.jpg, Hirosaki Castle, the seat of the Hirosaki Domain , also known as , was a ''tozama'' Han (Japan), feudal domain of Edo period JapanRavina, Mark. (1998) ''Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan,'' p. 222 It is located in Muts ...

during the

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

. After the

Meiji Restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored Imperial House of Japan, imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Althoug ...

, Shariki Village was created in 1889.

Shipwreck

On 30 October 1889, the '' Cheseborough'', an American merchant ship from

Bath, Maine Bath is a city in Sagadahoc County, Maine, United States. Bath is included in the Brunswick, Maine, Brunswick Micropolitan statistical area, micropolitan area. Bath has a 2024 population of 8,870. It is also the county seat of Sagadahoc County ...

, wrecked a mile from the coast of the village. The villagers made a great effort to save the sailors, unfortunately nineteen of them did not survive the incident. After the remainder of the sailors recovered, they returned to the United States but maintained their relationship with the people of Shariki. This relationship eventually resulted in the village establishing a sister-city agreement with Bath, Maine.

Merge into Tsugaru city

On 11 February 2005, Shariki, along with the town of Kizukuri, and the villages of Inagaki,

Kashiwa is a Cities of Japan, city located in Chiba Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 435,578 in 199,926 households and a population density of 3800 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . The name of the city is w ...

and Morita (all from Nishitsugaru District), was

merged Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of a company, business organization, or one of their operating units is transferred to or consolidated with another entity. They may happen through direct absorpt ...

to create the city of Tsugaru, and thus no longer exists as an independent municipality, however, the city inherited Shariki's relationship with Bath.

Population

At the time of its merger, Shariki had an estimated

population Population is a set of humans or other organisms in a given region or area. Governments conduct a census to quantify the resident population size within a given jurisdiction. The term is also applied to non-human animals, microorganisms, and pl ...

of 5,730 and a

population density Population density (in agriculture: Standing stock (disambiguation), standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geog ...

of 92.16 persons per km². The total area was 62.17 km². The village economy was dominated by agriculture and commercial fishing.

References

External links

Official website of Tsugaru

Local business and sightseeing guide
Dissolved municipalities of Aomori Prefecture {{aomori-geo-stub