Kumamoto

Kumamoto corresponds almost exactly to the old province of Higo and calls itself Hi no Kuni, the 'land of fire', after the volcano that dominates its east. Mount Aso's caldera, one of the largest on Earth, holds towns, rice fields and railway lines on its floor, while its central cones still steam and erupt. Rain falling on the volcanic uplands sinks into porous rock and re-emerges as springs, and Kumamoto City draws practically all of its drinking water from groundwater.

In the west the land descends to the shallow Ariake Sea and the calmer Yatsushiro Sea, fringed by the Amakusa islands, where Christianity took root in the sixteenth century. The south is mountainous, drained by the fast-flowing Kuma River through the basin of Hitoyoshi.

Kumamoto Castle, begun by Katō Kiyomasa and held by the Hosokawa for over two centuries, made the capital the administrative and military centre of Kyushu into the modern era. The earthquakes of April 2016 damaged the castle and devastated towns east of the city; its restoration has become a symbol of recovery. The prefecture is a leading agricultural producer and a growing centre of semiconductor manufacturing.

The name Kumamoto (熊本, 'bear origin') dates from about 1607, when Katō Kiyomasa completed his new castle and replaced the earlier writing 隈本 ('corner origin') with characters he considered more martial. The province of Higo (肥後) was created in the late seventh century by dividing the ancient Hi no Kuni into Hizen and Higo. The modern prefecture grew out of the Kumamoto domain and the smaller Hitoyoshi and Uto domains and the shogunal territory of Amakusa; after several renamings, including Shirakawa Prefecture, it took its present form as Kumamoto Prefecture in 1876.

The east is dominated by the Aso volcano and the Kyushu Mountains, which rise to 1,739 m at Kunimi-dake on the border with Miyazaki. Rivers such as the Shirakawa, Kikuchi and Midori flow west to the Kumamoto Plain and the Ariake Sea, whose tidal range is the largest in Japan. The Kuma River, one of Japan's three fastest rivers, runs from the Hitoyoshi basin through narrow gorges to Yatsushiro. Offshore, the Amakusa islands separate the Yatsushiro Sea from the East China Sea and form, with Unzen, the Unzen-Amakusa National Park.

The lowlands have a humid subtropical climate with hot, humid summers and a heavy rainy season in early summer; Kumamoto City lies in a basin and is known for summer heat. The Aso uplands are markedly colder, with frost and occasional snow in winter, and the grasslands are covered in mist in the rainy season. Typhoons can affect the prefecture in late summer.

Higo is rich in ancient remains, including decorated burial mounds (sōshoku kofun) painted with geometric patterns, and the Eta Funayama tumulus, whose inscribed sword is a National Treasure. In the medieval period the Kikuchi clan dominated the north and the Sagara the Hitoyoshi basin, while the hereditary priests of Aso Shrine also held power. After Hideyoshi's conquest of Kyushu, Katō Kiyomasa became lord of Higo and built Kumamoto Castle; in 1632 the domain passed to the Hosokawa, who ruled until 1871. Amakusa, devastated by the 1637 rebellion, was placed under direct shogunal rule.

In 1877 Kumamoto Castle withstood a siege by Saigō Takamori's rebel army in the Satsuma Rebellion, although fire destroyed the keep. Modern Kumamoto became a garrison, education and administrative centre for Kyushu. Industrial wastewater from a chemical plant in Minamata caused Minamata disease, officially recognised in 1956, one of the gravest cases of industrial pollution in Japanese history. The prefecture has also faced major disasters, notably the earthquakes of 2016 and the floods of the Kuma River in 2020.

Kumamoto people describe themselves as 'Higo mokkosu', stubborn and principled, and the prefecture has a strong literary tradition through the writers who taught here, among them Lafcadio Hearn and Natsume Sōseki. Shrine festivals, lantern dances and folk songs such as the Itsuki lullaby are widely known, and the black bear mascot Kumamon has made the prefecture's name familiar far beyond Japan.

Kumamoto's cooking draws on horse meat, lotus root, rush-grown plains and volcanic pastures, and it is one of the country's leading producers of tomatoes, watermelons and citrus. The rice shōchū of the Kuma basin carries a protected geographical indication.

Agriculture is one of Kumamoto's pillars: it is Japan's leading producer of tomatoes, watermelons and igusa (the rush used for tatami mats), and a major source of rice, mandarins, the dekopon citrus and beef from the Aso grasslands. Industry is led by semiconductors and electronics, concentrated around the airport in the 'Silicon Island' corridor east of Kumamoto City, together with transport equipment, notably motorcycles. Tourism centres on Aso, Kumamoto Castle, Amakusa and the onsen towns.