On the other, the peninsula is what gives the town its beautiful mountain and ocean scenery which, bolstered by significant investments in infrastructure and tourist facilities, has formed the basis for a burgeoning tourism industry.

To combat this, the town's bays and ponds have seen vigorous coastal reclamation efforts dating back to the early Meiji period (late 1800s).

The various neighborhoods of Ikata are found nestled among the foothills of the mountains, connected only by winding coastal roads and a single highway, Route 197.

[5] The length of the peninsula makes accurate weather prediction difficult for the town; when driving down Melody Line, it is not uncommon to find it sunny between one set of tunnels, rainy between another, and foggy between yet another.

[11] Ethnically Ikata is extremely homogeneous with only a handful of non-Japanese residents, most of whom are either temporary farm laborers from China, or English educators on the JET Programme.

The Sadamisaki Peninsula area has been inhabited since at least the Jōmon period (10,000–300 BC), as evidenced by the discovery of stone tools and earthenware pots in the Misaki and Kushi neighborhoods.

[4] In 1963 a local man discovered a stone ax dating to the mid-Yayoi period (300 BC–250 AD) in his farm plot in the Kawachi neighborhood.

Upon further investigation by the Japan Archaeological Society in 1986, the area was recognized as containing the remains of a highland settlement (高地性集落, kōchisei shūraku).

This is a type of settlement usually located several tens of meters above the surrounding area on mountainsides, and is peculiar to the Yayoi period.

As ownership of farmlands became increasingly concentrated in the hands of local ruling families, control of the Yano area was given to Taira no Tadamitsu, a member of the Heike clan.

[11] Entering the Edo period and the Tokugawa shogunate, the Uwa District came under control of the Uwajima Domain (宇和島藩, Uwajima-han).

From 1610 to 1612, the first Uwajima feudal lord, Tomita Nobutaka, gathered farmers from the local area to dig a canal through the thinnest part of the Sadamisaki Peninsula, Seto's Mitsukue neighborhood.

Ikata was designated a village (村, mura) in 1889 with the establishment of the modern municipalities system, and other neighborhoods along the peninsula soon followed suit, many merging to reduce the number of independent settlements from 26 to 6.

To begin with, multiple potential merger plans were put forth, one of which was for all of the contiguous Nishiuwa District towns (Misaki, Seto, Old Ikata, and Honai) to merge.

Following the merger a heated mayoral race was held, with 11 members of incumbent Kiyoyoshi Nakamoto's campaign arrested for electoral fraud.

Challenger Yoshihisa Hatanaka ultimately won, only to be arrested in February 2006 for corruption relating to government construction contracts.

A non-Ikata resident of the "People Who Don't Need Nukes" Party (原発いらない人々) managed to win slightly more than 1% of the electorate with 104 votes.

April 1, 2007, marked a milestone for the Ikata plant as it reached a total of 300 million kilowatt-hours of energy generated since beginning operations in 1977.

Melody Line is such an improvement over the old roads that it has become a significant Ehime sightseeing attraction in itself, with many tourists coming to see cherry blossoms in the spring.

[23] Iyo Railway bus service runs up and down the peninsula, to and from Yawatahama, and offers express buses from Misaki to Matsuyama.

However, commuter buses run infrequently and, due to the length of the peninsula and the scattered nature of the town's neighborhoods, bus travel remains more expensive and less convenient than in denser areas.

Since then, Ikata has put much effort into expanding the horizons of its residents through English language education via the JET Programme, and an annual international student exchange with Red Wing.

[27] Old Ikata also has a very old sake brewing tradition that dates back to the Edo period, with several tōji brewmasters in the local area.

[28] The Seto area produces vegetables such as the bright-purple kintarō potato, and also catches baby sardines called chirimen (ちりめん).

One Ikata specialty cuisine is jakoten (じゃこ天), a tempura-fried patty of pressed white fish meat and vegetables.

One feature particular to the Nanyo (southern Ehime) region is the use of the sentence-final particle ga (が) as a replacement for no (の) in some contexts.

Ox Demon (牛鬼, Ushi Oni) 2.Guardian Lion (唐獅子, Karashishi) 3.Five Deer (五ツ鹿, Itsu Shika) There are two small, uninhabited islands in the Uwa Sea near Yawatahama that belong to Ikata: Kuroshima and Karasushima.

A legend written in the 13th century text A Collection of Things Heard, Ancient and Modern (古今著聞集, Kokon chomon shū) tells the following story:[4] In the Antei era (1227–1229), in the Yano area of the Iyo Province there was an island called Kuroshima.

Though rats can of course be found on land, what a strange thing it is that they would be at the bottom of the sea!Local legend tells of a giant crab, eight tatami mats in size, that lives in the Kamegaike Pond in Old Ikata's Futami neighborhood.

To this day, every year in the fall the local people hold a festival in which a ceremonial ox demon (牛鬼, ushioni) float is carried across the pond so as to keep the crab sealed in its depths.The Ikata Power Plant was referenced in the 1995 movie Godzilla vs. Destoroyah.