Osaka Prefecture Sakai has a Humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa) characterized by warm summers and cool winters with light to no snowfall.

During the Kofun period between 300 and 500 AD, the Mozu Tumulus Cluster was built from over one hundred burial mounds.

During the Muromachi and Sengoku periods from about 1450 to 1600, Sakai developed into one of richest cities in Japan as a port for foreign trade.

The famous Zen Buddhist priest Ikkyū chose to live in Sakai because of its free atmosphere.

The government had ten divisions machi that were subordinate to the representative council of wealthy townsmen known as the egōshū.

In the Sengoku period, Christian missionaries, including Francis Xavier in 1550, visited Sakai and documented its prosperity.

[8][11] After the coming of Europeans, Sakai became a manufacturing base of matchlock firearms and a daimyō, Oda Nobunaga, was one of their important customers.

After the assassination of Nobunaga in 1582, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, seized power and abolished the autonomous system of Sakai, forcing many merchants to move to his stronghold in Osaka.

[12] In 1615, Sakai was razed to the ground in the summer campaign of the Siege of Osaka between the Toyotomi clan and Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Another major disaster was in 1945, when the city was heavily bombed on six occasions during World War II with over 1800 civilian deaths.

Following the February 2005 annexation of the town of Mihara (from Minamikawachi District), Sakai became a designated city in April 2006[13] giving it a greater measure of self-determination in governmental affairs.

Sakai has a mayor-council form of government with a directly elected mayor and a unicameral city council of 52 members.

However, after a period of high economic growth after World War II, along with the development and expansion of the Osaka metropolitan area, Sakai also has increasingly become a satellite city (commuter town) for Osaka metropolis, as represented by the development of Senboku New Town.