Aichi-ken, Japan — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Aichi-ken known for?

Aichi is known as Japan's manufacturing engine and its samurai cradle. Nagoya anchors it. The prefecture fills the Nōbi Plain on the Pacific coast of central Honshu, in the Chūbu region, and its factories around the city of Toyota turned a family loom business into one of the world's great car industries.

Three warlords who unified Japan, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, were all born on this ground. Castles and car plants share the same plain.

Where is Aichi-ken?

Aichi sits in the middle of Honshu, on the Pacific side of the Chūbu region, wrapped around two bays. Ise Bay opens to the west and Mikawa Bay to the east. The prefecture fills much of the Nōbi Plain, the second-largest lowland in Japan, laid down by the Kiso River and its neighbours as they spill toward the sea.

Nagoya stands at the head of Ise Bay, where the flat delta gives way to salt water. Two peninsulas frame the coast. The Chita Peninsula reaches south on the western side, closing off Ise Bay, and the Atsumi Peninsula curls around Mikawa Bay to the east, so the shoreline folds into sheltered water rather than facing the open Pacific head-on.

Inland the ground changes. Gifu Prefecture and Nagano Prefecture rise to the north, Shizuoka Prefecture lies east across the hills, and Mie Prefecture sits west beyond the bay. Western Aichi, the old province of Owari, is flat farmland and dense city on the plain. Eastern Aichi, the old Mikawa, climbs into wooded hills that stiffen toward the mountains.

The split is old and physical. Rivers, plain and two bays fix the shape of the prefecture far more than any drawn border does.

What is Aichi-ken like?

Aichi wears two faces, the warlord's and the engineer's. Its samurai past is the older one. The three men who pulled a fractured Japan back into one state, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, were all born on this soil, and their castles still stand at Nagoya and Okazaki.

Nagoya Castle carries a pair of golden shachihoko, tiger-headed carp, along its main keep. Atsuta Shrine, in the south of Nagoya, guards the Kusanagi sword, one of the three sacred regalia of the imperial house. Faith and swordcraft run deep here.

The other face is industrial. This is the workshop of Japan, the plain where a loom maker in the town of Toyota became a carmaker, and where the kilns of Seto and Tokoname have fired pottery for centuries. The table shows the same practical streak.

Nagoya cooks its own dishes, hitsumabushi of grilled eel over rice and pork cutlet under the dark red Hatchō miso brewed at Okazaki, plain food built to fill working people. Japanese is the language throughout. Castle, shrine, kiln and factory sit within an hour of one another, and the prefecture holds them without treating any as a museum piece.

What is the history of Aichi-ken?

Aichi was assembled in 1872 from two old provinces, Owari in the west and Mikawa in the east. Both had outsized histories. In 1560 Oda Nobunaga broke a far larger invading army at the Battle of Okehazama near present-day Nagoya, the victory that launched the wars of unification.

Tokugawa Ieyasu, born at Okazaki, finished them and took the country. He ordered Nagoya Castle raised in 1610 as the seat of a branch of his house, the Owari Tokugawa, and the castle town grew into the city that anchors the prefecture.

What is the climate of Aichi-ken?

Aichi has a humid subtropical climate, and its summers are the defining season. They are hot and close. Warm, wet air pools over the Nōbi Plain and the two bays through July and August, and the rainy front of early summer, the tsuyu, soaks the prefecture before the heat sets in hard.

Typhoons can track up the Pacific coast in late summer. Winters run cool and much drier, with dry days blowing down off the mountains toward Gifu Prefecture, and snow staying mostly on the eastern hills of Mikawa rather than the plain.

How do you get to Aichi-ken?

Most visitors reach Aichi through Nagoya. Two doors open onto it. Chubu Centrair International Airport sits on a man-made island in Ise Bay off Tokoname, handling the flights, while the Tōkaidō Shinkansen runs east-west through Nagoya Station and links the prefecture to Tokyo and Osaka in a couple of hours.

A fast Meitetsu train, the μ-Sky, ties the airport to Nagoya Station in under half an hour. From there the local Meitetsu and subway lines fan out across the Nōbi Plain to Okazaki, Toyota and the Chita and Atsumi peninsulas.