Mutsu Province

Rikuo is a redirect to this article. For the former Japanese vehicle manufacturer, see Rikuo Nainenki .

Mutsu ( Japanese 陸 奥 国 , Mutsu no kuni ) or Ōshū ( 奥 州 ) was one of the historical provinces of Japan , which included the area of ​​today's prefectures of Fukushima , Miyagi , Iwate and Aomori and the cities of Kazuno and Kosaka in Akita Prefecture .

Originally the province was called Michi-no-oku ( 道 奥 国 , - no kuni , dt. About: "End of the road") and until the Heian period Michi-no-ku ( 陸 奥 国 , - no kuni , dt. About : "End of the mainland").

In the 8th century it was the second most populous province in Japan with 186,000 inhabitants. The historical capital ( kokufu ) was Tagajō .

Mutsu in northern Honshu was one of the last provinces to be formed when the land was taken from the indigenous Ainu . It became one of the largest in Japan as it expanded northward. The old capital was located in the modern Miyagi Prefecture. During the Sengoku period , different families ruled parts of the province. The Uesugi had a castle in Aizu-Wakamatsu in the south, the Nambu near Morioka in the north and Date Masamune, a close ally of the Tokugawa , founded Sendai , now the largest city in the Tohoku region .

On January 19, 1869 ( Meiji 1/12/7), 4 other provinces were created from parts of Mutsu: Rikuchū Province (German "Middle Mutsu"), Rikuzen Province (German "Front Mutsu"), and Iwaki Province and Iwashiro Province, both of which were named after historical predecessors. To distinguish it from the old province of Mutsu, the characters of the new, smaller Mutsu were read analogously as Rikuō . However, outside of official documents, this reading did not prevail.

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  Mutsu province from the end of the 7th century to 712

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  Mutsu Province 718 after the separation of Iwase provinces in the southwest and Iwaki in the southeast

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  Mutsu Province until 1868

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  Mutsu / Rikuō province from 1869

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cornelius J. Kiley: Provincial administration and land tenure in Heian Japan . In: Donald H. Shively, William H. McCullough (Eds.): The Cambridge History of Japan . Volume 2: Heian Japan. Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-521-22353-9 , pp. 255 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
2. ↑ Fumio Yonechi, Yoshikuni Imaizumi ( 米 地 文 夫 , 今 泉 芳 邦 ): 地名 「三 陸 地方」 の 起源 に 関 す る 地理学 的 な ら び に 社会学 的 問題 . In: 岩手 大学 教育 学部 研究 年報 . tape 54 , no. 1 , October 1994, ISSN  0367-7370 , p. 135 ( PDF ). PDF ( Memento of the original from July 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

Coordinates: 38 ° 52 '  N , 141 ° 10'  E