Tōhoku region
The Tōhoku region, Northeast region, or Northeast Japan consists of the northeastern portion of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. This traditional region consists of six prefectures: Akita, Fukushima, Iwate and Yamagata. Tōhoku retains a reputation as a scenic region with a harsh climate. In the 20th century, tourism became a major industry in the Tōhoku region. In mythological times, the area was known as Azuma and corresponded to the area of Honshu occupied by the native Ainu; the area was the Dewa and the Michinoku regions, a term first recorded in Hitachi-no-kuni Fudoki. There is some variation in modern usage of the term "Michinoku". Tōhoku's initial historical settlement occurred between the seventh and ninth centuries, well after Japanese civilization and culture had become established in central and southwestern Japan; the last stronghold of the indigenous Emishi on Honshu and the site of many battles, the region has maintained a degree of autonomy from Kyoto at various times throughout history.
The haiku poet Matsuo Bashō wrote Oku no Hosomichi during his travels through Tōhoku. The region is traditionally known as a less developed area of Japan; the catastrophic 9.0-Magnitude earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, inflicted massive damage along the east coast of this region, killed 15,894 people and was the costliest natural disaster which left 500,000 people homeless along with radioactive fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Masamune, feudal lord of Date clan, expanded trade in the Tōhoku region. Although faced with attacks by hostile clans, he managed to overcome them after a few defeats and ruled one of the largest fiefdoms of the Tokugawa shogunate, he worked on many projects to beautify the region. He is known to have encouraged foreigners to come to his land. Though he funded and promoted an envoy to establish relations with the Pope in Rome, he was motivated at least in part by a desire for foreign technology, similar to that of other lords, such as Oda Nobunaga.
Further, once Tokugawa Ieyasu outlawed Christianity, Masamune reversed his position, though disliking it, let Ieyasu persecute Christians in his domain. For 270 years, Tōhoku remained a place of tourism and prosperity. Matsushima, for instance, a series of tiny islands, was praised for its beauty and serenity by the wandering haiku poet Matsuo Bashō, he showed sympathy for Christian traders in Japan. In addition to allowing them to come and preach in his province, he released the prisoner and missionary Padre Sotelo from the hands of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Date Masamune allowed Sotelo as well as other missionaries to practice their religion and win converts in Tōhoku; the most used subdivision of the region is dividing it to "North Tōhoku" consisting of Aomori and Iwate Prefectures and "South Tōhoku" consisting of Yamagata and Fukushima Prefectures. The population collapse of Tōhoku, which began before the year 2000, has accelerated, now including dynamic Miyagi. Despite this, Sendai City has grown due to the disaster.
The population collapse of Aomori and Akita Prefectures, Honshu's 3 northernmost, began in the early 1980s after an initial loss of population in the late 1950s. Fukushima Prefecture, prior to 1980, had traditionally been the most populated, but today Miyagi is the most populated and urban by far. Tōhoku, like most of Japan, is mountainous, with the Ōu Mountains running north-south; the inland location of many of the region's lowlands has led to a concentration of much of the population there. Coupled with coastlines that do not favor seaport development, this settlement pattern resulted in a much greater than usual dependence on land and rail transportation. Low points in the central mountain range make communications between lowlands on either side of the range moderately easy. Tōhoku was traditionally considered the granary of Japan because it supplied Sendai and the Tokyo-Yokohama market with rice and other farming commodities. Tōhoku provided 20 percent of the nation's rice crop; the climate, however, is harsher than in other parts of Honshū due to the stronger effect of the Siberian High, permits only one crop a year on paddy fields.
In the 1960s, steel, chemical and petroleum refining industries began developing. Designated citiesSendai Core citiesIwaki Koriyama Akita Morioka Aomori Hachinohe Other citiesAizuwakamatsu Daisen Date Fukushima Goshogawara Hachimantai Hanamaki Higashimatsushima Higashine Hirakawa Hirosaki Ichinoseki Ishinomaki Iwanuma Kakuda Kamaishi Kaminoyama Katagami Kazuno Kesennuma Kitaakita Kitakami Kitakata Kuji Kurihara Kuroishi Minamisōma Misawa Miyako Motomiya Murayama Mutsu Nagai Nan'yō Natori Nihonmatsu Nikaho Ninohe Noshiro Obanazawa Oga Ōdate Ōfunato Ōsaki Ōshū Rikuzentakata Sagae Sakata Semboku Shinjō Shiogama Shirakawa Shiroishi Sōma Sukagawa Tagajō Takizawa Tamura Tendō Tome Tomiya Tōno Towada Tsugaru Tsuruoka Yamagata Yokote Yonezawa Yurihonjō Yuzawa Mount Bandai Three Mountains of Dewa Hakkōda Mountains Mount Hayachine Mount Iwaki Lake Tazawa Lake Towada Kitakami River Oirase River Valley the islands of Matsushima Bay Mount Osore Sanriku Coastline Bandai-Asahi National Park Miss Veedol Beach Rikuchu Kaigan National Park Towada-Hachimantai National Park 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami 2006 Kuril Islands earthquake Geography of Japan Tōhoku dialect List of regions in Japan Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric and Käthe Roth..
Japan encyclopedia. Cambr
Hokkaido
Hokkaido known as Ezo, Yeso, or Yesso, is the second largest island of Japan, the largest and northernmost prefecture. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaido from Honshu; the two islands are connected by the undersea railway Seikan Tunnel. The largest city on Hokkaido is its capital, its only ordinance-designated city. About 43 km north of Hokkaido lies Russia. To its east and north-east are the disputed Kuril Islands; the Nihon Shoki, finished in 720 AD, is said to be the first mention of Hokkaido in recorded history. According to the text, Abe no Hirafu led a large navy and army to northern areas from 658 to 660 and came into contact with the Mishihase and Emishi. One of the places Hirafu went to was called Watarishima, believed to be present-day Hokkaido. However, many theories exist in relation to the details of this event, including the location of Watarishima and the common belief that the Emishi in Watarishima were the ancestors of the present-day Ainu people. During the Nara and Heian periods, people in Hokkaido conducted trade with Dewa Province, an outpost of the Japanese central government.
From the Middle Ages, the people in Hokkaido began to be called Ezo. Hokkaido subsequently became known as Ezogashima; the Ezo relied upon hunting and fishing and obtained rice and iron through trade with the Japanese. During the Muromachi period, the Japanese created a settlement at the south of the Oshima Peninsula; as more people moved to the settlement to avoid battles, disputes arose between the Japanese and the Ainu. The disputes developed into a war. Takeda Nobuhiro killed the Ainu leader and defeated the opposition in 1457. Nobuhiro's descendants became the rulers of the Matsumae-han, granted exclusive trading rights with the Ainu in the Azuchi-Momoyama and Edo periods; the Matsumae family's economy relied upon trade with the Ainu. They held authority over the south of Ezochi until the end of the Edo period in 1868; the Matsumae clan rule over the Ainu must be understood in the context of the expansion of the Japanese feudal state. Medieval military leaders in northern Honshū maintained only tenuous political and cultural ties to the imperial court and its proxies, the Kamakura Shogunate and Ashikaga Shogunate.
Feudal strongmen sometimes located themselves within medieval institutional order, taking shogunal titles, while in other times they assumed titles that seemed to give them a non-Japanese identity. In fact, many of the feudal strongmen were descended from Emishi military leaders, assimilated into Japanese society; the Matsumae clan were of Yamato descent like other ethnic Japanese people, whereas the Emishi of northern Honshu were a distinctive group related to the Ainu. The Emishi were conquered and integrated into the Japanese state dating back as far as the 8th century, as result began to lose their distinctive culture and ethnicity as they became minorities. By the time the Matsumae clan ruled over the Ainu most of the Emishi were ethnically mixed and physically closer to Japanese than they were to Ainu; this dovetails nicely with the "transformation" theory that native Jōmon peoples changed with the infusion of Yayoi immigrants into the Tōhoku rather than the "replacement" theory which posits that one population was replaced by another.
There were numerous revolts by the Ainu against the feudal rule. The last large-scale resistance was Shakushain's Revolt in 1669–1672. In 1789, a smaller movement, the Menashi–Kunashir rebellion, was crushed. After that rebellion, the terms "Japanese" and "Ainu" referred to distinguished groups, the Matsumae were unequivocally Japanese. In 1799–1821 and 1855–1858, the Edo Shogunate took direct control over Hokkaido in response to a perceived threat from Russia. Leading up to the Meiji Restoration, the Tokugawa Shogunate realized there was a need to prepare northern defenses against a possible Russian invasion and took over control of most of Ezochi; the Shogunate made the plight of the Ainu easier, but did not change the overall form of rule. Hokkaido was known as Ezochi until the Meiji Restoration. Shortly after the Boshin War in 1868, a group of Tokugawa loyalists led by Enomoto Takeaki temporarily occupied the island, but the rebellion was crushed in May 1869. Ezochi was subsequently put under control of Hakodate Prefectural Government.
When establishing the Development Commission, the Meiji Government introduced a new name. After 1869, the northern Japanese island was known as Hokkaido; the primary purpose of the development commission was to secure Hokkaido before the Russians extended their control of the Far East beyond Vladivostok. Kuroda Kiyotaka was put in charge of the venture, his first step was to journey to the United States and recruit Horace Capron, President Grant's Commissioner of Agriculture. From 1871 to 1873 Capron bent his efforts to expounding Western agriculture and mining with mixed results. Capron, frustrated with obstacles to his efforts returned home in 1875. In 1876, William S. Clark arrived to found an agricultural college in Sapporo. Although he only remained a year, Clark left a lasting impression on Hokkaido, inspiring the Japanese with his teachings on agriculture as well as Christianity
Tokyo
Tokyo Tokyo Metropolis, one of the 47 prefectures of Japan, has served as the Japanese capital since 1869. As of 2018, the Greater Tokyo Area ranked as the most populous metropolitan area in the world; the urban area houses the seat of the Emperor of Japan, of the Japanese government and of the National Diet. Tokyo forms part of the Kantō region on the southeastern side of Japan's main island and includes the Izu Islands and Ogasawara Islands. Tokyo was named Edo when Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu made the city his headquarters in 1603, it became the capital after Emperor Meiji moved his seat to the city from Kyoto in 1868. Tokyo Metropolis formed in 1943 from the merger of the former Tokyo Prefecture and the city of Tokyo. Tokyo is referred to as a city but is known and governed as a "metropolitan prefecture", which differs from and combines elements of a city and a prefecture, a characteristic unique to Tokyo; the 23 Special Wards of Tokyo were Tokyo City. On July 1, 1943, it merged with Tokyo Prefecture and became Tokyo Metropolis with an additional 26 municipalities in the western part of the prefecture, the Izu islands and Ogasawara islands south of Tokyo.
The population of the special wards is over 9 million people, with the total population of Tokyo Metropolis exceeding 13.8 million. The prefecture is part of the world's most populous metropolitan area called the Greater Tokyo Area with over 38 million people and the world's largest urban agglomeration economy; as of 2011, Tokyo hosted 51 of the Fortune Global 500 companies, the highest number of any city in the world at that time. Tokyo ranked third in the International Financial Centres Development Index; the city is home to various television networks such as Fuji TV, Tokyo MX, TV Tokyo, TV Asahi, Nippon Television, NHK and the Tokyo Broadcasting System. Tokyo third in the Global Cities Index; the GaWC's 2018 inventory classified Tokyo as an alpha+ world city – and as of 2014 TripAdvisor's World City Survey ranked Tokyo first in its "Best overall experience" category. As of 2018 Tokyo ranked as the 2nd-most expensive city for expatriates, according to the Mercer consulting firm, and the world's 11th-most expensive city according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's cost-of-living survey.
In 2015, Tokyo was named the Most Liveable City in the world by the magazine Monocle. The Michelin Guide has awarded Tokyo by far the most Michelin stars of any city in the world. Tokyo was ranked first out of all sixty cities in the 2017 Safe Cities Index; the QS Best Student Cities ranked Tokyo as the 3rd-best city in the world to be a university student in 2016 and 2nd in 2018. Tokyo hosted the 1964 Summer Olympics, the 1979 G-7 summit, the 1986 G-7 summit, the 1993 G-7 summit, will host the 2019 Rugby World Cup, the 2020 Summer Olympics and the 2020 Summer Paralympics. Tokyo was known as Edo, which means "estuary", its name was changed to Tokyo when it became the imperial capital with the arrival of Emperor Meiji in 1868, in line with the East Asian tradition of including the word capital in the name of the capital city. During the early Meiji period, the city was called "Tōkei", an alternative pronunciation for the same characters representing "Tokyo", making it a kanji homograph; some surviving official English documents use the spelling "Tokei".
The name Tokyo was first suggested in 1813 in the book Kondō Hisaku, written by Satō Nobuhiro. When Ōkubo Toshimichi proposed the renaming to the government during the Meiji Restoration, according to Oda Kanshi, he got the idea from that book. Tokyo was a small fishing village named Edo, in what was part of the old Musashi Province. Edo was first fortified in the late twelfth century. In 1457, Ōta Dōkan built Edo Castle. In 1590, Tokugawa Ieyasu was transferred from Mikawa Province to Kantō region; when he became shōgun in 1603, Edo became the center of his ruling. During the subsequent Edo period, Edo grew into one of the largest cities in the world with a population topping one million by the 18th century, but Edo was Tokugawa's home and was not capital of Japan. The Emperor himself lived in Kyoto from 794 to 1868 as capital of Japan. During the Edo era, the city enjoyed a prolonged period of peace known as the Pax Tokugawa, in the presence of such peace, Edo adopted a stringent policy of seclusion, which helped to perpetuate the lack of any serious military threat to the city.
The absence of war-inflicted devastation allowed Edo to devote the majority of its resources to rebuilding in the wake of the consistent fires and other devastating natural disasters that plagued the city. However, this prolonged period of seclusion came to an end with the arrival of American Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1853. Commodore Perry forced the opening of the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate, leading to an increase in the demand for new foreign goods and subsequently a severe rise in inflation. Social unrest mounted in the wake of these higher prices and culminated in widespread rebellions and demonstrations in the form of the "smashing" of rice establishments. Meanwhile, supporters of the Meiji Emperor leveraged the disruption that t
Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan
A city designated by government ordinance known as a designated city or government ordinance city, is a Japanese city that has a population greater than 500,000 and has been designated as such by order of the Cabinet of Japan under Article 252, Section 19 of the Local Autonomy Law. Designated cities are delegated many of the functions performed by prefectural governments in fields such as public education, social welfare, business licensing and urban planning; the city government is delegated the various minor administrative functions in each area, the prefectural government retains authority over major decisions. For instance, pharmaceutical retailers and small clinics can be licensed by designated city governments, but pharmacies and hospitals are licensed by prefectural governments. Designated cities are required to subdivide themselves into wards, each of which has a ward office conducting various administrative functions for the city government, such as koseki and juminhyo resident registration and tax collection.
In some cities, ward offices are responsible for business licensing, construction permits and other administrative matters. The structure and the authorities of the wards are determined by municipal ordinances; the 23 special wards of Tokyo are not part of this system, as Tokyo is a prefecture, its wards are independent cities. Although the two largest wards of Tokyo and Nerima, are populous enough to become designated cities, they are not considered to be "cities" within the meaning of the Local Autonomy Law and so are not designated such. No cities designated by government ordinance have lost that status. Cities designated by government ordinance have been established since 1956. To become a candidate for designated city status, a city must have a population greater than 500,000. An application for designation is made by a city with the approval of both the city and the prefectural assemblies; the following cities have not yet been nominated. The first form of the designated city system was enacted under Japan local government system in 1878 with the introduction of "wards."
Under that system, wards existed in every city. Most cities had only one ward, but the largest cities at the time were divided into 15, two wards, respectively; the municipal system enacted in 1889 replaced ward assemblies with city assemblies but retained ward assemblies in Tokyo and Kyoto, which had no assembly of their own but were governed by the prefectural assembly. In 1898, the three cities were allowed to form city assemblies; the ward system was adopted by three more cities prior to World War II: Nagoya and Kobe. Under a 1911 statute, wards were so treated as local entities. Following the war, the 1947 Local Autonomy Law grandfathered in the five subdivided cities as special cities; the system was replaced by the designated city system when the Local Autonomy Law was amended, in 1956. During the ensuing Japanese economic growth period, the government required designated cities to be forecast to reach a population of one million within the near future, but the requirement was dropped in 2005 to accommodate several geographically-large cities that were formed by mergers, under the government of Junichiro Koizumi.
Administrative divisions of Japan Urban area Directory of Designated Cities and Mayors "Japan's Evolving Nested Municipal Hierarchy: The Race for Local Power in the 2000s," by A. J. Jacobs at Urban Studies Research, Vol. 2011.
Nanpō Islands
The Nanpō Islands is a collective term for the groups of islands that are located to the south of the main islands of the Japanese archipelago. They extend from the Izu Peninsula west of Tokyo Bay southward for about 1,200 km, to within 500 km of the Mariana Islands; the Nanpō Islands are all administered by Tokyo Metropolis. The Hydrographic and Oceanographic Department of the Japan Coast Guard defines the Nanpō Shotō as follows: Nanpō Shotō Izu Shotō Ogasawara Guntō Mukojima Rettō Chichijima Rettō Hahajima Rettō Kazan Rettō including Nishinoshima Kita Iwo Jima Iwo Jima Minami Iwo Jima The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan, a government agency, responsible for standardization of place names, does not use the term Nanpō Shotō, although it has agreed with the Japan Coast Guard over the names and extents of the subgroups of the Nanpō Shotō. Ryukyu Islands
Hokuriku region
The Hokuriku region was located in the northwestern part of Honshu, the main island of Japan. It lay along the Sea of Japan within the Chūbu region, which it is a part of, it is equivalent to Koshi Province and Hokurikudō area in pre-modern Japan. Due to its elongated shape, the Noto Peninsula jutting out, the region is known as a'rising dragon' 昇龍道. Since the Heian period until the Edo period the region was a core recipient of population, the population grew to be much larger proportionately than it is today, despite the rural character. With the growth of urban centers in the 20th century Tokyo and Chūkyō, the Hokuriku has declined in importance to become relative backwaters; the region is known for traditional culture that originated from elsewhere, long lost along the Taiheiyō Belt. The Hokuriku region includes the four prefectures of Ishikawa, Fukui and Toyama, although Niigata is sometimes included in one of the following regions: Shin'etsu: includes Niigata and Nagano prefectures Kōshin'etsu: includes Niigata and Yamanashi prefectures Hokushin'etsu: includes both the Hokuriku and Shin'etsu regions The major population centers of Hokuriku are: Niigata Kanazawa, Toyama Fukui, Jōetsu, Nagaoka Of these, Niigata is the largest with a population of over 800,000.
The main industries in the Hokuriku area include chemicals, tourism and textile machinery, heavy machinery and fishing. Koshihikari, a popular variety of rice is a special product of Hokuriku region; the Hokuriku region has the highest volume of snowfall of any inhabited and arable region in the world. This is because dry Siberian air masses, which develop high humidity over the Sea of Japan, are forced upwards when they encounter the mountains of Honshū, causing the humidity to condense as snow; the long winters and deep snow of this region are depicted in Hokuetsu Seppu, an encyclopedic work of the late Edo period which describes life in the Uonuma district of Niigata Prefecture. The Hokuriku region is the setting for Yasunari Kawabata's novel Snow Country. Hokuriku is listed as No. 4 in Lonely Planet's Best in Travel 2014 – Top 10 Regions. Http://www.lonelyplanet.com/travel-tips-and-articles/lonely-planets-best-in-travel-2014-top-10-regions Kōshin'etsu region Shin'etsu region Tōkai region Tōhoku Kitamaebune Hokuriku Shinkansen Hokuriku Main Line Hokuriku Expressway Hokuriku dialect Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric and Käthe Roth.
Japan Encyclopedia. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. OCLC 58053128. ISBN 0-674-01753-6, ISBN 978-0-674-01753-5
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