Oita

Oita occupies the north-eastern corner of Kyushu, facing Shikoku across the Bungo Channel and the western end of the Seto Inland Sea. Almost three quarters of the prefecture is mountain and forest; the population lives mostly along the coast, in the capital Oita and the neighbouring spa city of Beppu, and in basin towns such as Hita, Taketa and Yufu.

The prefecture's identity rests on volcanic heat. The Beppu–Kuju volcanic belt feeds thousands of hot-spring sources, and Oita leads Japan both in their number and in the volume of water they deliver; the prefecture markets itself as the "onsen prefecture". The same heat drives geothermal power stations in the Kuju highlands, among the largest in the country.

Oita is equally rich in religious history. Usa Jingū is the head shrine of the Hachiman cult, and the Kunisaki Peninsula developed a distinctive fusion of Shinto and Buddhism known as Rokugō Manzan, whose temples, stone Buddhas and rites survive. In the 16th century the Ōtomo clan made Funai, today's Oita city, one of the first ports in Japan open to Portuguese trade and Christian missions.

The name goes back to Ōkita or Ōita District (大分郡) of Bungo Province, recorded in the 8th-century Bungo Fudoki; the gazetteer explains it as "broad fields", although the characters literally mean "great division". The prefecture was formed in 1871 from the domains and shogunal lands of Bungo; in 1876 the Shimoge and Usa districts of Buzen Province were transferred from Fukuoka, giving Oita its present northern border around Nakatsu.

Oita is dominated by volcanic uplands. The Kuju mountains in the south-west include Nakadake (1,791 m), the highest summit on Kyushu's main island, and the Yufu-dake and Tsurumi-dake volcanoes stand directly behind Beppu Bay. In the north the round Kunisaki Peninsula is an eroded volcano cut by radiating valleys, while the lava plateaux around Yabakei have weathered into pinnacles and gorges. The south is formed by the older, non-volcanic Sobo and Katamuki ranges on the Miyazaki border, and the coast south of Saganoseki breaks up into the drowned ria inlets of the Bungo Channel. Parts of the uplands belong to Aso-Kuju National Park and parts of the northern coast to the Setonaikai National Park.

The coast has a mild Seto Inland Sea climate with relatively low rainfall for Kyushu, sheltered by the mountains from the winter monsoon. The inland basins and the Kuju highlands are markedly cooler, with frost, rime ice and occasional snow in winter. The south-eastern coast receives heavy rain in the June–July rainy season and during typhoons.

Bungo and Buzen belonged to the old land of Toyo (豊国). Usa Jingū grew into one of the most powerful shrines of the Nara period, whose oracle intervened in court politics. From the Kamakura period the Ōtomo clan ruled Bungo; under Ōtomo Sōrin in the 16th century Funai traded with Portuguese ships and hosted Jesuit missionaries, before Shimazu invasions and the loss of the domain in 1593 ended Ōtomo power.

In the Edo period the area was deliberately fragmented into many small domains – Nakatsu, Kitsuki, Hiji, Funai, Usuki, Saiki, Oka, Mori and others – while Hita was administered directly by the shogunate as the seat of its intendant for western Kyushu. This patchwork fostered a lively scholarship: Hirose Tansō's private academy Kangien in Hita, the philosopher Miura Baien in Kunisaki and the Western-learning physicians of Nakatsu.

Modern Oita industrialised late. Designation as a "new industrial city" in 1964 brought steelworks and petrochemical plants to the reclaimed shore of Oita city. From 1979 Governor Hiramatsu Morihiko's One Village One Product movement, which encouraged each community to develop a signature product, became a model for regional development in Japan and abroad.

Oita's culture combines spa-town life with a deep layer of mountain Buddhism. On the Kunisaki Peninsula the Rokugō Manzan temples keep rites in which masked demons act as protective figures, and cliff-carved Buddhas at Usuki, Kumano and elsewhere form Japan's largest concentration of stone Buddhist sculpture. The former shogunal town of Hita preserves merchant quarters and a festive urban culture. Kagura is performed at rural shrines, especially in the south.

Oita cooking relies on chicken, citrus and the sea. The prefecture consumes chicken at one of the highest rates in Japan and has turned it into signature dishes, while kabosu, a sour green citrus almost entirely grown in Oita, is squeezed over fish, soup and even beer. The fast waters of the Hōyo Strait off Saganoseki produce prized mackerel and horse mackerel, and the forests supply much of Japan's dried shiitake.

Oita's economy combines heavy industry on the coast with tourism and agriculture inland. A large integrated steelworks and a petrochemical complex occupy the reclaimed shore of Oita city, joined by semiconductor and electronics plants and a car assembly plant near Nakatsu. The Kuju highlands host some of Japan's largest geothermal power stations. Tourism centres on Beppu and Yufuin; agriculture and forestry contribute kabosu, dried shiitake, Bungo beef and barley shōchū, and the Bungo Channel supports fishing and fish farming.