Toyama

Toyama is shaped like a bowl opening onto the sea. On three sides the land rises to high mountains, the Hida range (Northern Alps) in the east with Tateyama and Tsurugi-dake, and lower ranges towards Gifu and Ishikawa; in the middle lie the Toyama and Tonami plains; and to the north is Toyama Bay, which plunges to more than 1,000 metres within a short distance of the shore. The height difference of about 4,000 metres between the peaks and the sea floor is one of the steepest anywhere in Japan.

The prefecture turned this landscape into resources. Its fast rivers powered some of the earliest large hydroelectric schemes in Japan, above all at Kurobe, and cheap power drew aluminium, chemical and pharmaceutical industries. The traditional medicine trade, in which peddlers left boxes of remedies in households all over Japan and charged only for what had been used, grew into a modern pharmaceutical industry.

For visitors, Toyama means the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route across the Northern Alps, the Kurobe Gorge, the fish of Toyama Bay, the bronze-casting town of Takaoka and the thatched villages of Gokayama, part of a World Heritage Site since 1995.

The name Toyama (富山, "rich mountain") comes from the castle town that became the prefectural capital; earlier spellings used different characters, and the origin of the name is uncertain. The prefecture corresponds exactly to the old province of Etchū.

In the Edo period most of Etchū belonged to the Kaga domain of the Maeda family, with the smaller Toyama domain held by a Maeda branch line. After 1871 the area was briefly made Niikawa Prefecture and then merged into Ishikawa in 1876. Local dissatisfaction, above all over spending on flood control for Toyama's dangerous rivers, led to separation, and Toyama Prefecture was re-established in 1883.

The eastern third of the prefecture is taken up by the Hida Mountains, including the Tateyama massif (Ōnanji-yama, 3,015 m), Tsurugi-dake (2,999 m) and the ridges along the Kurobe River. Japan's first recognised active glaciers were identified on Tateyama and Tsurugi in 2012. Short, steep rivers, the Kurobe, Jōganji, Jinzū, Shō and Oyabe, run straight from the mountains to the sea and have built wide alluvial fans.

In the west the Tonami Plain is known for its sankyoson, a dispersed settlement pattern in which farmhouses stand alone among their fields, each surrounded by a windbreak grove. Toyama Bay is fed by cold, nutrient-rich deep water and warm surface currents, and supports a great variety of fish. Along the coast at Uozu, mirages can appear over the bay in spring.

Toyama has a Sea of Japan climate with heavy snow in winter, especially in the mountains, where snow walls up to around 20 metres high form along the Alpine Route. The plains receive less snow than the mountains but have many cloudy days. Summers are hot and humid, and föhn winds can bring high temperatures. The abundant snowmelt gives the prefecture exceptionally good and plentiful water.

Etchū was a frontier province on the Hokurikudō road. The poet Ōtomo no Yakamochi served as its governor from 746 to 751 and wrote many of the poems later collected in the Man'yōshū at the provincial capital near present-day Takaoka. From the fifteenth century the Ikkō sect of Jōdo Shinshū became powerful, and temple communities such as Inami and Johana grew into regional centres.

In 1585 Toyotomi Hideyoshi subdued the warlord Sassa Narimasa and gave Etchū to the Maeda, who held it until 1871. Maeda Toshinaga founded Takaoka in 1609, and in 1639 the separate Toyama domain was created for a Maeda branch. Toyama's domain promoted the medicine trade, and its peddlers travelled to every part of Japan.

In modern times Toyama was the starting point of the nationwide rice riots of 1918, which began among fishermen's wives at Uozu. Industrial pollution along the Jinzū River caused itai-itai disease, recognised in 1968 as Japan's first officially designated pollution disease. The completion of the Kurobe Dam in 1963 and the opening of the Alpine Route in 1971 turned the mountains into a major destination.

Toyama's culture is strongly shaped by Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism and by the prosperity of the Maeda era. Takaoka's bronze and copper casting and Inami's woodcarving grew from temple building and patronage, and both towns still produce most of Japan's Buddhist bells, statues and temple carvings.

The prefecture is also known for folk song and dance. The Owara Kaze-no-Bon of Yatsuo, danced silently through the night to the sound of kokyū fiddles, and the Kokiriko songs of Gokayama, among the oldest folk songs in Japan, are its best-known performing traditions. The Takaoka and Johana float festivals are part of the UNESCO-listed Yama, Hoko, Yatai festivals.

Toyama Bay supplies the prefecture's signature ingredients: firefly squid in spring, white shrimp in summer and yellowtail in winter. Toyama is also one of the largest consumers of kombu in Japan, a legacy of the kitamaebune ships that brought kelp from Hokkaido; fish cured between sheets of kombu and kelp-wrapped kamaboko are everyday foods. Rice and pure mountain water support sake brewing.

Toyama is one of the most industrialised prefectures on the Sea of Japan coast. Abundant hydroelectric power from the Kurobe and other rivers attracted aluminium processing, chemicals and heavy engineering; aluminium sashes, window frames and fasteners are major products. The pharmaceutical industry, descended from the medicine trade, is one of the largest in Japan, especially in generic drugs.

Fisheries in Toyama Bay, rice on the plains, tulip bulbs in Tonami and tourism along the Alpine Route and in Gokayama complete the picture.