Chugoku (western Honshu)

The western end of Honshu, divided down its spine into two very different halves. The San'yo side faces the Inland Sea - sheltered, sunny, dry, and for most of history the main route between Kyushu and the capital, carrying trade, envoys from Korea and China, and armies. The San'in side faces the Sea of Japan and is cold, wet and thinly populated, and has been in relative decline for four hundred years. The region's ancient centre was Izumo on the northern coast, whose grand shrine is among the oldest in Japan and whose mythology in the Kojiki describes a kingdom that surrendered its land to the imperial line, which is generally read as a memory of an early rival power being absorbed. Iwami Ginzan, also on that coast, was a silver mine that at its peak in the seventeenth century may have produced a third of the world's silver and drew Portuguese and Dutch traders to Japan. The Mori clan dominated the region in the sixteenth century and, reduced to Choshu at the western tip after backing the losing side at Sekigahara, nursed the grievance for two hundred and fifty years. Choshu then supplied much of the leadership of the Meiji Restoration and a disproportionate share of the modern Japanese army's officer corps. The region's defining modern event is Hiroshima, its largest city and a military headquarters, destroyed by the first atomic bomb on 6 August 1945. The rebuilt city has organised its identity around that fact ever since. Okayama and Hiroshima are the largest cities. The Seto-Ohashi bridge, opened in 1988, links the region to Shikoku. Iwami Ginzan is now a World Heritage site. Izumo Taisha still holds its own festival calendar.

• Existed: 700 CE – present
• Type: Entity