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List of regions of Japan

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Map of the regions of Japan. From northeast to southwest: Hokkaidō (red), Tōhoku (yellow), Kantō (green), Chūbu (cyan), Kansai (violet), Chūgoku (orange), Shikoku (purple), and Kyūshū & Okinawa (grey).

Japan is divided into eight regions. They are not official administrative units, though they have been used by government officials for statistical and other purposes since 1905. They are widely used in, for example, maps, geography textbooks, and weather reports, and many businesses and institutions use their home regions in their names, for example Kinki Nippon Railway, Chūgoku Bank, and Tōhoku University.

Each region contains one or more of the country's 47 prefectures. Of the four main islands of Japan, Hokkaidō, Shikoku, and Kyūshū make up one region each, the latter also containing the Ryukyu Islands, while the largest island Honshū is divided into five regions. Okinawa Prefecture is usually included in Kyūshū, but is sometimes treated as its own ninth region.[1][2][3]

Japan has eight High Courts, but their jurisdictions do not correspond to the eight regions (see Judicial system of Japan for details).

Table

Region Population Area in km²[4] Prefectures contained
Hokkaidō 5.4 million[5] 83,000 Hokkaidō
Tōhoku 8.9 million[6] 67,000 Akita, Aomori, Fukushima, Iwate, Miyagi, Yamagata
Kantō 43.3 million[7] 32,000 Chiba, Gunma, Ibaraki, Kanagawa, Saitama, Tochigi, Tōkyō
Chūbu 21.4 million[8] 67,000 Aichi, Fukui, Gifu, Ishikawa, Nagano,
Niigata, Shizuoka, Toyama, Yamanashi
Kansai (also known as Kinki) 22.5 million[9] 33,000 Hyōgo, Kyōto, Mie, Nara, Ōsaka, Shiga, Wakayama
Chūgoku 7.3 people[10] 32,000 Hiroshima, Okayama, Shimane, Tottori, Yamaguchi
Shikoku 3.8 million[11] 1,000 Ehime, Kagawa, Kōchi, Tokushima
Kyūshū & Okinawa 14 million[12] 44,000 Fukuoka, Kagoshima, Kumamoto,
Miyazaki, Nagasaki, Ōita, Okinawa, Saga

Regions and islands

This is a list of Japan's major islands, traditional regions, and subregions, going from northeast to southwest.[13][14] The eight traditional regions are marked in bold.

See also

References

External links

Media related to Regions of Japan at Wikimedia Commons