Mutsu Province

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Map of Japanese provinces with province highlighted

Mutsu Province (陸奥国 Mutsu no kuni?) was an old province of Japan, made up of the present-day prefectures of Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate and Aomori, and the municipalities of Kazuno and Kosaka in Akita Prefecture. It was also known as Ōshū (奥州), although that term usually referred to the combined provinces of Mutsu and Dewa.

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[edit] Historical record

Mutsu Province, on northern Honshū, was one of the last provinces to be formed as land was taken from the indigenous Ainu[citation needed] and became the largest as it expanded northward. The ancient capital was in modern Miyagi Prefecture.

In the 3rd month of 2nd 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.[1]

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.[1]

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.

[edit] Districts

[edit] Under Ritsuryō

[edit] Districts during the Meiji Era

[edit] References