Miyagi Prefecture - History

History

See also: Historic Sites of Miyagi Prefecture

Miyagi Prefecture was formerly part of the province of Mutsu. Mutsu Province, on northern Honshu, was one of the last provinces to be formed as land was taken from the indigenous Emishi, and became the largest as it expanded northward. The ancient capital was at Taga-jō in modern Miyagi Prefecture.

In the third month of second year of the Wadō era (709), there was an uprising against governmental authority in Mutsu Province and in nearby Echigo Province. Troops were promptly dispatched to subdue the revolt.

In Wadō 5 (712), the land of Mutsu Province was administratively separated from Dewa Province. Empress Gemmei's Daijō-kan continued to organize other cadastral changes in the provincial map of the Nara period, as in the following year when Mimasaka Province was divided from Bizen Province; Hyūga Province was sundered from Osumi Province; and Tamba Province was severed from Tango Province.

During the Sengoku period various clans ruled different parts of the province. The Uesugi clan had a castle town at Wakamatsu in the south, the Nambu clan at Morioka in the north, and Date Masamune, a close ally of the Tokugawa, established Sendai, which is now the largest town of the Tōhoku region.

In the Meiji period, four new provinces were created from parts of Mutsu: Rikuchū, Rikuzen, Iwaki, and Iwashiro.

The area that is now Aomori Prefecture continued to be part of Mutsu until the abolition of the han system and the nation-wide conversion to the prefectural structure of modern Japan.

Date Masamune built a castle at Sendai as his seat to rule Mutsu. In 1871, Sendai Prefecture was formed. It was renamed Miyagi prefecture the following year.

Read more about this topic:  Miyagi Prefecture

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,—for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
    —E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)

    “Bias, point of view, fury—are they ... so dangerous and must they be ironed out of history, the hills flattened and the contours leveled? The professors talk ... about passion and point of view in history as a Calvinist talks about sin in the bedroom.”
    —Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)