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TOHOKU REGION
- This article is about the region in Japan. Tohoku is also a town in Aomori Prefecture.
The Tōhoku region (東北地方, Tōhoku-chihō?) is a geographical area of Japan. Tōhoku is Japanese for "northeast," and the Tōhoku region occupies the northeastern portion of Honshū, the largest island of Japan. The area is also known as Michinoku (みちのく, Michinoku?).
The region consists of six prefectures: Akita, Aomori, Fukushima, Iwate, Miyagi and Yamagata Prefectures.
The last stronghold of the indigenous Ainu on Honshū and the site of many battles, Tōhoku retains a reputation as a remote region, offering breathtaking scenery but a harsh climate. The haiku poet Matsuo Basho wrote Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North) during his travels through Tōhoku.
Tōhoku, like most of Japan, is hilly or mountainous, with the Ou Mountains running north-south. Its initial historical settlement occurred between the seventh and ninth centuries, well after Japanese civilization and culture had become firmly established in central and southwestern Japan. Although iron, steel, cement, chemical, pulp, and petroleum-refining industries began developing in the 1960s, Tōhoku was traditionally considered the granary of Japan because it supplied Sendai and the Tokyo-Yokohama market with rice and other farm commodities. Tōhoku provided 20 percent of the nation's rice crop. The climate, however, is harsher than in other parts of Honshū and permits only one crop a year on paddy fields.
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