Tohoku

Tohoku, literally ‘east-north’, covers the northern end of Honshu from the Tsugaru Strait to the borders of Kanto and Niigata. It accounts for close to a fifth of Japan's land area but, apart from the city of Sendai, is thinly populated: a region of mountain ranges, beech forests, rice plains and small castle and port towns. For centuries it was regarded from the capital as the remote frontier of Michinoku, ‘the end of the road’.

That image hides a deep history and a strong regional identity. Tohoku holds some of Japan's most important Jōmon sites, the twelfth-century Buddhist capital of Hiraizumi and the domain cities of the Date, Uesugi, Satake, Tsugaru and Nanbu clans. Its culture is known through its summer festivals, its folk crafts such as kokeshi dolls and Nanbu ironware, the Tsugaru-shamisen and a dense network of hot-spring villages.

The Pacific coast was devastated by the earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011, and the Sanriku coast has since been rebuilt with new sea walls, raised town centres and memorial sites. The Tohoku Shinkansen connects the region's main cities with Tokyo.

The Ōu Mountains, Japan's longest mountain range, run north–south for about 500 km down the centre of the region and divide it into a Pacific side and a Sea of Japan side. West of them lie the Dewa Mountains and a string of volcanoes – Iwaki, Chōkai, Gassan – and east of them the ancient Kitakami and Abukuma highlands. Rivers flow through long intermontane basins and plains: the Kitakami, the region's longest, south to Ishinomaki; the Mogami through Yamagata to Sakata; the Omono, Iwaki and Abukuma.

The coastlines contrast sharply. The Sanriku coast of Iwate and northern Miyagi is a deeply indented ria coast of drowned valleys and cliffs, while the Sea of Japan side has long sandy shores and lagoon plains such as Shōnai and Akita. Volcanism has produced Lake Towada, Lake Tazawa (the deepest lake in Japan) and Lake Inawashiro. The Shirakami Mountains between Aomori and Akita hold the largest virgin beech forest in East Asia.

Winters are long and cold. On the Sea of Japan side – Akita, Yamagata, western Aomori and Aizu – north-westerly monsoon winds bring some of the heaviest snowfall of any populated area in the world; mountain towns such as Sukayu in the Hakkōda range and Zaō record deep snowpacks. The Pacific side, including Sendai and Morioka, is drier and sunnier in winter. In summer the Pacific coast is exposed to the yamase, a cool, damp north-easterly wind from the Sea of Okhotsk that historically caused crop failures and famines, while the western basins can become very hot.

Tohoku was home to the Jōmon culture, whose large settlements such as Sannai-Maruyama in Aomori flourished for millennia. In ancient times the Yamato state called the region's inhabitants Emishi and pushed its frontier northwards from fortified posts such as Taga Castle (724); the campaigns of Sakanoue no Tamuramaro around 800 and the defeat of the Emishi leader Aterui brought the Kitakami basin under central control.

In the late eleventh century the Northern Fujiwara established a semi-independent realm centred on Hiraizumi, whose gold and trade financed temples such as Chūson-ji, until Minamoto no Yoritomo conquered it in 1189. Under the Tokugawa, the region was divided among powerful domains, including Sendai (Date), Aizu, Yonezawa (Uesugi), Kubota (Satake), Hirosaki (Tsugaru) and Morioka (Nanbu). In 1868 most of them formed the Ōuetsu Reppan Dōmei alliance against the new Meiji government, and the siege of Aizu-Wakamatsu became one of the defining episodes of the Boshin War.

In modern Japan, Tohoku supplied rice, labour and later electricity to the capital region, and suffered repeated cold-summer famines and Sanriku tsunamis (1896, 1933). The Tohoku Shinkansen, opened in 1982 and extended to Shin-Aomori in 2010, shortened distances to Tokyo. The Great East Japan Earthquake of 11 March 2011 and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident marked the region deeply and led to a long reconstruction.

Tohoku's festival season in early August is famous across Japan: the Aomori Nebuta and Hirosaki Neputa lantern floats, the Akita Kantō pole lanterns, the Sendai Tanabata streamers, the Yamagata Hanagasa dance and the Morioka Sansa Odori drum parade. Folk traditions include the Namahage visiting deities of the Oga Peninsula, Shugendō mountain asceticism on the Three Mountains of Dewa, and Tōno's folk tales recorded by Yanagita Kunio.

The region's crafts – kokeshi dolls, Nanbu ironware, Aizu and Jōbōji lacquer, Tsugaru lacquer, Kaba-zaiku cherry-bark work and Kogin embroidery – grew out of long winters and domain patronage. Musically it is the home of the Tsugaru-shamisen. Tohoku dialects are distinctive and sometimes hard for other Japanese to follow. Literary associations include Matsuo Bashō's journey in Oku no Hosomichi and the Iwate writers Miyazawa Kenji and Ishikawa Takuboku.