Page 211 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Japan

A neon-lined street leading to Tsutenkaku Tower in Osaka

WESTERN HONSHU

The cultural heartland of the country, Western
Honshu is where Japan’s first imperial courts held
sway, in an area called Yamato. The name Yamato
refers to where heaven and earth divide, and also
to the land founded by the mythical son of the
gods, emperor Jimmu. In the Japanese mind,
Yamato is a holy place, a homeland, as the
legendary emperor Keiko ex pressed it in verse
form almost two millennia ago, “whose trees and
rocks, streams, and mountains house the gods.”
Legend solidified into fact in the 4th century AD
when a clan called Yamato expanded its kingdom
in the region. Japan’s first emperors, the Yamato
rulers set up court on the Yamato Plain, the site of
present-day Nara Prefecture, home to the graceful
ancient city of Nara, with its quiet stroll gardens,
the smell of lingering incense, and the reflections
of winged pagodas in green ponds.
Despite this mystical history, this is not just
a land of antiquity. Hiroshima, reborn after the
devastating 1945 atomic bomb, the inter national
port of Kobe, and Osaka are Western Honshu’s
great metropolitan centers.
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