Ibaraki

Ibaraki covers the north-eastern corner of the Kanto Plain and the southern end of the Abukuma and Yamizo uplands. Its long Pacific shoreline runs from the rocky coast of Kitaibaraki to the straight dunes of Kashima-nada, and in the south Lake Kasumigaura and the Tone River form a landscape of lagoons, rice paddies and lotus fields.

The prefecture is one of Japan's agricultural heavyweights, a leading producer of melons, lotus root, chestnuts, dried sweet potato and many vegetables supplying the Tokyo market. At the same time it is industrial: Hitachi, the company, was born in the copper-mining town of the same name, and the Kashima coastal complex is one of the country's big steel and petrochemical sites. Tsukuba Science City gathers national research institutes, the JAXA space centre and a major university.

For visitors, Ibaraki is known for the Kairakuen plum garden in Mito, the flowering hills of Hitachi Seaside Park, Mount Tsukuba with its twin peaks, the ancient Kashima Shrine and the Fukuroda Falls in the northern hills.

The name comes from the ancient Ibaraki district (茨城郡) around present-day Ishioka and Mito. The eighth-century Hitachi no Kuni Fudoki explains it with a legend of a fort built with thorny briar (ibara) to subdue the local people. After the abolition of the domains in 1871, the domains of Hitachi province were combined into Ibaraki Prefecture, taking the name of the district that contained Mito. In 1875 the part of Shimosa province north of the Tone River was transferred from the former Inba prefecture, giving Ibaraki roughly its present borders: the Tone River still largely marks the boundary with Chiba.

Two thirds of Ibaraki is flat or gently rolling: the north-eastern Kanto Plain, with the Hitachi and Kashima terraces cut by the Naka, Kuji, Kokai and Tone rivers. The north is hilly, with the Yamizo mountains on the Tochigi and Fukushima borders and the southern tip of the Abukuma highlands running down to the sea. Isolated Mount Tsukuba (877 m) rises from the plain and is visible from much of Kanto. The south is dominated by the Kasumigaura lake system, a shallow lagoon linked to the Tone River and the Pacific.

The climate is humid subtropical with a Pacific influence. Summers are warm and humid but slightly cooler on the coast than in inland Kanto, thanks to the sea breeze. Winters are dry and sunny, with frost inland and occasional snow; the northern hills are colder. Typhoons and heavy autumn rain can affect the coast and the low-lying Tone basin.

Hitachi was one of the larger and richer provinces of ancient Japan, and Kashima Shrine at its south-eastern edge was among the most important shrines of the east. Its eighth-century gazetteer, the Hitachi no Kuni Fudoki, is one of only five that survive. In the tenth century Taira no Masakado rose in revolt from his base in the west of the present prefecture.

The Satake clan ruled most of Hitachi for some four centuries until Tokugawa Ieyasu transferred them to Akita in 1602. Mito then became the seat of one of the three senior Tokugawa branch houses (gosanke). The Mito lords sponsored the scholarly project of the Dai Nihonshi, a history of Japan whose emphasis on loyalty to the emperor fed the 'Mito school' of thought that inspired the movement to overthrow the shogunate. Mito men carried out the assassination of the regent Ii Naosuke at Sakuradamon in 1860.

Ibaraki Prefecture was created in 1871. In the twentieth century it industrialised around the Hitachi mines and factories, developed the Kashima industrial zone on its coast and, from the 1960s, received Tsukuba Science City, relocating national research institutes from Tokyo. Tokai village became the birthplace of Japan's nuclear energy research.

Ibaraki's cultural identity rests on its ancient shrines, the scholarly legacy of the Mito domain and a strong rural tradition. The prefecture has a distinctive dialect, Ibaraki-ben, known for flat intonation and final particles such as '-dappe'. Crafts range from Yuki silk and Kasama stoneware to stone lanterns carved from Makabe granite.

Ibaraki cooking draws on a large farm output and on the fish of the cold Pacific. Natto is the emblem of Mito, anglerfish hotpot the winter speciality of the coast, and dried sweet potato the classic snack of the Hitachinaka area.

Ibaraki's agricultural output is among the highest of any prefecture, based on vegetables, fruit, rice, pork and poultry sold in the Tokyo market. Manufacturing is strong: electrical machinery around Hitachi, steel and petrochemicals at Kashima, and a growing belt of factories and logistics centres along the Joban and Ken-O expressways. Research and development centred on Tsukuba, and nuclear research at Tokai and Oarai, give the prefecture an unusual scientific profile.