Regional division
Fig.
Prefectures and regions [
]
Main islands of Japan are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu;
Honshu is the biggest islands. Japan
is divided into the Tokyo metropolitan area and 46
prefectures as administrative districts. It is also classified into
eight regions conventionally: from north, Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kanto,
Chubu, Kinki, Chubu, Shikoku, and Kyushu regions. In addition to the
regions, there are the Nansei Islands to the southwest of Kyushu and
the Izu-Bonin Islands to the south of Honshu.
In this website, Japan is divided into seven regions for describing
regional landforms and geology as follows: Hokkaido, northeastern
Honshu (Tohoku), central Honshu (Kanto and Chubu), southwestern Honshu
(Kinki and Chugoku) and Shikoku, Kyushu, the Nansei Islands, and the
Izu-Bonin Islands.
We often use “northeastern Japan” and “southwestern Japan”;
northeastern Japan generally indicates a region to the east of central
Honshu (Tohoku) and southwestern Japan to the west (Kinki, Chugoku,
Shikoku, and northern Kyushu).
