Chiba, the prefecture named for a thousand leaves beside Tokyo
Most international travellers to Japan land in Chiba, not Tokyo, since Narita Airport sits there. The prefecture's name is written with characters meaning thousand and leaf, and its coast holds Japan's largest prehistoric shell mounds, left by people who feasted on Tokyo Bay and the Pacific thousands of years ago.
Chiba covers most of the Bōsō Peninsula, which closes off the eastern side of Tokyo Bay. It borders Ibaraki along the Tone River and Tokyo and Saitama along the Edo River. The nearby Kuroshio Current keeps it milder in winter and cooler in summer than the capital. In 2019 its population was 6,278,060, packed mostly into the northwest, which merges into the Tokyo sprawl.
The name goes back to an ancient regional office and was taken by a branch of the Taira clan that settled near today's Chiba City late in the Heian period. As the Chiba clan it broke with the imperial court, helped establish the Kamakura shogunate and dominated the area for centuries. The modern prefecture was formed on June 15, 1873, by merging two smaller ones.
After the Second World War, planners built the Keiyō Industrial Zone along the western shore, a hub of heavy industry and ports whose name joins a character from Tokyo with one from Chiba. Commuter rail turned northern towns into bedroom communities, and Narita opened in 1978 despite heavy protest, replacing overcrowded Haneda for most international traffic. Rice and vegetable farms expanded to feed Greater Tokyo even as rural people drifted to the cities.
In 2011 the great Tōhoku earthquake killed 20 people in Chiba, and liquefaction wrecked homes on reclaimed land, especially in Urayasu, home of Tokyo Disney Resort. The prefecture's population fell for the first time since the early 1920s. Beyond the industrial shore, the coast is protected in two quasi-national parks and one prefectural park, both quasi-national parks founded in 1953.
Source: Chiba Prefecture
