Kansai

Kansai is the name in everyday use for the region that official geography calls Kinki (近畿), literally "the area near the capital". Both names reach back to the imperial age: Kinki echoes the Chinese notion of the royal domain, while Kansai – "west of the barrier" – originally meant the lands west of the three ancient barriers of Suzuka, Fuwa and Arachi that guarded the approaches to the capital, and later, loosely, everything west of the Hakone checkpoint. The seven prefectures counted here are Kyoto, Osaka, Hyogo, Nara, Shiga, Wakayama and Mie; Mie is also routinely grouped with the Tōkai area around Nagoya.

For more than a thousand years this was Japan's political and cultural core. The Yamato court rose in the Nara Basin, the first permanent capital was laid out at Heijō-kyō (Nara) in 710, and Heian-kyō (Kyoto) served as the imperial seat from 794 until 1869. The region holds a dense concentration of national treasures, from the world's oldest surviving wooden buildings at Hōryū-ji to the Zen gardens of Kyoto.

Modern Kansai is also a commercial powerhouse. Osaka, the "kitchen of the nation" in the Edo period, and the port of Kobe anchor the Keihanshin metropolitan area, Japan's second after Greater Tokyo. The region keeps a strong identity of its own – in dialect, humour, food and a long-standing rivalry with Tokyo and the Kantō region.

Kansai occupies the waist of Honshu between the Sea of Japan in the north and the Pacific in the south. At its centre lies Lake Biwa, Japan's largest lake, whose only natural outflow becomes the Seta, Uji and Yodo rivers before reaching Osaka Bay. The Kyoto and Nara basins and the Osaka Plain form the historic heartland, framed by low ranges such as the Hira, Hiei, Ikoma and Kongō mountains.

To the south the Kii Peninsula rises into the steep, forested Kii Mountains, with the Ōmine range reaching about 1,915 metres at Hakkyō-ga-take, the region's highest point. Its coast runs from the rias of Shima and Kumano-nada to the warm cape of Shionomisaki, Honshu's southernmost point. The north-west is shaped by the Tango Peninsula, the San'in coast of Hyogo and the uplands of Tajima and Tanba; Awaji Island closes off Osaka Bay from the Seto Inland Sea.

The basins and plains of central Kansai have an inland-sea climate: hot, humid summers, relatively dry winters and moderate rainfall. Kyoto and Nara, enclosed by hills, are known for sultry summers and cold winter mornings. The Sea of Japan side – northern Kyoto and Hyogo, northern Shiga – receives heavy winter snow brought by north-westerly monsoon winds.

The Pacific-facing Kii Peninsula is among the wettest parts of Japan; the Ōdaigahara plateau on the Nara–Mie border records exceptionally high annual rainfall, and the southern coast is warm enough for citrus and subtropical vegetation. Typhoons regularly make landfall on the Kii Peninsula in late summer and autumn.

Large keyhole-shaped tumuli (kofun) around Sakai and Habikino mark the rise of the Yamato kings from the 3rd to the 6th century. Buddhism arrived in the 6th century, and Prince Shōtoku founded Shitennō-ji and Hōryū-ji. After a series of palace sites, the Nara period (710–794) produced the great temples of Tōdai-ji and Kōfuku-ji; the move to Heian-kyō in 794 opened four centuries of court culture.

Even after political power shifted to Kamakura and later Edo, Kyoto remained the imperial capital, and Kansai stayed central: the Ashikaga shoguns ruled from Kyoto, Toyotomi Hideyoshi built Osaka Castle, and the decisive campaigns of unification were fought here. In the Edo period Osaka became the nation's rice and commodity exchange, and Kobe opened to foreign trade in 1868. Industrialisation, the growth of private railways and the post-war economy turned the area into a single conurbation. The Great Hanshin Earthquake of 17 January 1995 devastated Kobe and reshaped Japanese disaster policy.

Kansai is the cradle of many Japanese arts. Noh and kyōgen developed under Ashikaga patronage in Kyoto; bunraku puppet theatre and kabuki flourished in Osaka; the tea ceremony was codified by Sen no Rikyū, a merchant of Sakai. Kyoto's craft traditions – Nishijin weaving, Kyō-yūzen dyeing, Kiyomizu ware – and its Gion district with geiko and maiko remain living institutions.

The region's religious landscape spans the Grand Shrines of Ise, the esoteric Buddhist mountain of Kōya-san, the Kumano pilgrimage routes and Tendai's headquarters on Mount Hiei. Kansai-ben, the regional dialect family, is known across Japan through manzai comedy and is a marker of identity; Osaka's humour and directness are often contrasted with Kyoto's reserve.