Saitama

Saitama occupies the northern part of the old province of Musashi, from the Tokyo border to the Tone River and west into the Chichibu mountains. About two thirds of it is plain and low terrace, crossed by the Ara, Tone and Edo rivers and built up almost continuously in the south and east. Cities such as Kawaguchi, Tokorozawa and Koshigaya are home to hundreds of thousands of people who commute daily into Tokyo.

Yet the prefecture is more than a dormitory. Kawagoe, 'Little Edo', preserves a street of clay-walled merchant storehouses; the Sakitama burial mounds at Gyoda yielded the inscribed Inariyama sword, a key document of fifth-century Japan; Omiya has its Hikawa Shrine and bonsai village; and Chichibu, a mountain basin in the west, is known for its night festival, its Kannon pilgrimage and the landscapes of Chichibu-Tama-Kai National Park.

Saitama is often teased in Japan as unfashionable – the self-mocking term 'dasaitama' plays on dasai, 'uncool' – a stereotype the prefecture has turned into a source of humour and local pride. It is also a major sporting centre, with the Saitama Stadium and Saitama Super Arena.

The name comes from the ancient Saitama district (埼玉郡, originally read Sakitama) in the north-east, where the Sakitama kofun group and the Sakitama Shrine lie. When the domains were abolished, Saitama Prefecture was set up in 1871 for eastern Musashi north of Tokyo, with its seat at Urawa; in 1876 it absorbed the Musashi part of Kumagaya Prefecture, reaching its present extent. The prefecture's name is written with the characters for 'cape' and 'jewel', and the modern capital adopted the same name in hiragana, さいたま, when it was formed in 2001.

The east of Saitama is the heart of the Kanto Plain: alluvial lowlands along the Naka, Furutone and Edo rivers, and the Omiya and Musashino terraces to the west of them. The Tone River forms most of the northern border with Gunma and Ibaraki. West of a line through Hanno, Ogawa and Yorii, hills rise to the Chichibu basin and the Oku-Chichibu mountains, whose highest point, Sanpozan (2,483 m), lies on the Nagano border. The Arakawa River rises here and cuts the scenic Nagatoro gorge on its way to the plain. Saitama has no coastline.

Saitama's inland plain is among the hottest areas in Japan in summer: Kumagaya has recorded some of the highest temperatures ever measured in the country. Winters are dry, sunny and cold with strong north-westerly winds. The Chichibu mountains are cooler and see snow in winter, and heavy rain from typhoons can cause flooding in the low-lying east.

The plain was settled early, and in the fifth and sixth centuries local rulers built the Sakitama kofun group at Gyoda, one of the largest clusters of burial mounds in eastern Japan. An iron sword from the Inariyama mound bears a 115-character gold-inlaid inscription dated 471, one of the oldest written documents found in Japan. Hikawa Shrine at Omiya became the chief shrine of Musashi.

In the medieval period Musashi was the home of warrior bands such as the Musashi-shichito and of retainers of the Kamakura shogunate like Hatakeyama Shigetada. Under the Tokugawa the area supplied Edo with food, timber and labour; the Nakasendo and Nikko Kaido were lined with post towns, and Kawagoe was a strategic castle town guarding the shogun's capital. The Tone River was diverted eastward in the early seventeenth century, reshaping the plain.

In 1884 impoverished silk farmers rose in the Chichibu Incident, one of the largest peasant uprisings of the Meiji era. The prefecture's industrialist son Shibusawa Eiichi, born in Fukaya, founded hundreds of modern companies. From the 1950s Saitama's population grew rapidly as Tokyo's suburbs spread north; in 2001 Urawa, Omiya and Yono merged into Saitama City.

Saitama's cultural heritage is strongest in its old towns and mountains: the storehouse streets of Kawagoe, the festivals and pilgrim route of Chichibu, the doll makers of Iwatsuki and the bonsai gardens of Omiya. Two of its float festivals, Chichibu and Kawagoe, belong to UNESCO's inscription of Yama, Hoko, Yatai float festivals, and Hosokawa-shi paper from Ogawa is part of the UNESCO inscription of Washi.

Saitama's food is that of a farming hinterland for Edo and Tokyo: wheat noodles, rice crackers, vegetables and tea. The prefecture is one of Japan's biggest consumers of udon, and its specialities are hearty rather than refined.

Saitama's economy is closely tied to Tokyo: many residents work in the capital, and the prefecture hosts logistics centres, food and printing plants, machinery and car-parts makers along its expressways. Honda assembles cars at Yorii, and the Chichibu area supplies limestone for cement. Agriculture near the metropolis concentrates on vegetables – leeks, spinach, broccoli – and on flowers and tea, and retail and services have grown with the population.