Gifu

Gifu is one of Japan's larger prefectures and one of eight without a coastline. Its two halves are strikingly different. Southern Gifu, the old province of Mino, lies on the Nōbi Plain beside Nagoya, crossed by the Kiso, Nagara and Ibi rivers; it is urban, industrial and closely tied to the Chūkyō metropolitan area. Northern Gifu, the old province of Hida, is a land of forests and high mountains reaching up to the Northern Alps, with the old town of Takayama at its centre.

Mino was the gateway between eastern and western Japan: whoever held it controlled the routes to Kyoto. Oda Nobunaga made Gifu his base for the unification of the country, and the decisive Battle of Sekigahara was fought on its western edge in 1600. Hida, poor in rice, was famed for its carpenters, the Hida no takumi, and came under direct shogunate rule for its timber and mines.

The prefecture's crafts are among the most important in Japan: Mino produces a large share of the country's ceramics, Seki its knives and Mino its fine paper. Tourism focuses on Takayama, the gasshō-zukuri villages of Shirakawa-gō, the hot springs of Gero and Okuhida, and the summer dance festival of Gujō Hachiman.

The name Gifu was given to the castle town of Inokuchi by Oda Nobunaga in 1567, after he captured Inabayama Castle. Tradition holds that the Zen monk Takugen Shūon proposed it, combining the first character of Mount Qi, where the Zhou dynasty arose in ancient China, with the character for hill, a reference to Confucius's home of Qufu.

The prefecture was formed in 1871 from the province of Mino; Hida, briefly part of Takayama Prefecture and then of Chikuma Prefecture, was added in 1876, giving Gifu its present borders.

Mino occupies the northern part of the Nōbi Plain and the hills and valleys around it. The lower courses of the Kiso, Nagara and Ibi rivers, the Kiso Three Rivers, were prone to devastating floods; villages protected themselves with ring levees called wajū. North and east, the land rises through the hills of Tōnō, known for clay and ceramics, to the mountains of Okumino and Gujō.

Hida is almost entirely mountainous. The Takayama basin lies at around 570 metres; to the east rise the Northern Alps, with Okuhotaka-dake on the Nagano border, Kasa-ga-take and Norikura, and to the south Ontake. Hakusan stands on the western border with Ishikawa. The Shō River flows north through Shirakawa-gō to Toyama, and the Hida River south to the Kiso.

The two halves have different climates. The Mino plain is hot and humid in summer, with some of the highest temperatures recorded in Japan in towns such as Tajimi, and mild winters with occasional snow. Hida has a cold inland mountain climate: Takayama's winters are long and snowy, and Shirakawa-gō is known for snow two metres deep.

Mino lay on the Tōsandō, the ancient highway east, and in 672 its forces helped Prince Ōama win the Jinshin War. In the Sengoku period Saitō Dōsan seized power in Mino before his son-in-law Oda Nobunaga took Inabayama Castle in 1567, renamed the town Gifu and began his campaign to unify Japan under the slogan tenka fubu. In 1600 Tokugawa Ieyasu won the Battle of Sekigahara in western Mino, founding the Tokugawa order.

In the Edo period Mino was divided among many domains and shogunal lands; Hida was placed under direct shogunate rule in 1692 and governed from the Takayama jin'ya. The great Nōbi earthquake of 1891, the largest inland earthquake recorded in Japan, devastated the plain. In the twentieth century the Kamioka mine in Hida became home to the Kamiokande and Super-Kamiokande neutrino detectors, whose research led to Nobel Prizes in physics in 2002 and 2015.

Gifu combines the court and samurai culture of Mino with the mountain culture of Hida. Mino's craft traditions, ceramics, paper, lanterns and umbrellas, supplied the markets of Kyoto and Nagoya. The Hida no takumi, carpenters sent to build the capitals from the Nara period onwards, left a legacy of fine woodworking visible in Takayama's merchant houses and festival floats.

The prefecture's summer is defined by water: cormorant fishing on the Nagara, practised for some 1,300 years, and the all-night Gujō Odori dances. In the mountains, Jōdo Shinshū piety and communal labour sustained villages such as Shirakawa-gō, where neighbours still rethatch roofs together.

Hida's food is warming mountain cooking: beef, miso grilled on magnolia leaves, pickles and soba. Mino has river fish such as ayu (sweetfish) from the Nagara, chestnut sweets from Ena and Nakatsugawa, and the everyday dishes of the Nagoya area. Both halves have strong sake traditions.

Southern Gifu is part of the Chūkyō industrial zone. Mino ware makes the prefecture Japan's largest producer of ceramic tableware and a major maker of tiles; Seki is the country's knife capital; and Kakamigahara has a long history of aircraft and aerospace manufacturing. Automotive parts, machinery, plastics and apparel are also important.

Northern Gifu depends on forestry, woodworking and furniture, agriculture and tourism centred on Takayama, Shirakawa-gō, Gero and Okuhida. The Kamioka area hosts major underground physics laboratories.