The Chugoku region (中国地方 Chūgoku-chihō) is located within the western region of Honshu, the largest island of Japan.

The name literally means "Middle Country", the sole surviving relic of a historical division of Japan into "Near Countries" (近国 Kingoku), "Middle Countries" and "Far Countries" (遠国 Ongoku), based on distance from the capital Kyoto. Strictly speaking, today's Chugoku covers only the Middle Countries along the San'indo and San'yodo roads. It consists of the following prefectures: Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Shimane, Tottori. Okayama may or may not be included, as only three of its component provinces (Mimasaka, Bizen and Bitchu) were considered Middle Countries.

In Japanese, the characters 中国 and the reading Chūgoku are also used to mean "China". (The same characters are used in Chinese, but pronounced Zhongguo.) However, as the Chugoku region is always referred to with the qualifier "-chihō" and the People's Republic of China and Republic of China can be referenced by their full names, there is usually little scope for confusion.

Sightseeing in Chūgoku

• Hiroshima Prefecture: Hiroshima, Itsukushima Shrine
• Yamaguchi Prefecture: Iwakuni, Hofu, Shimonoseki, Hagi
• Shimane Prefecture: Tsuwano, Izumo, Matsue

See also: Geography of Japan, List of regions in Japan, Kyushu region, Kinki region

External link

• Wikitravel: Chugoku (http://wikitravel.org/en/article/Chugoku)