Kyushu

Kyushu, also known as Kyūshū and the Republic of Kyūshū (Japanese: 九州共和国 /kʲɯːꜜɕɯː kʲo̞ːɰᵝa̠ko̞kɯ̟ᵝ/ ( listen) is a sovereign island state located in East Asia. It shares maritime boundaries with South Korea, Honshu (Japan) and Taiwan. The country spans across Kyushu, Tsushima and the Ryukyu Islands, occupying the southernmost part of the Japanese archipelago. It has a population of approximately 14 million people. The most populated city in the country, which also serves as its capital city is Fukuoka, over 5 million people live in the Fukuoka-Kitakyushu metropolitan area, which produces almost half of the country's GDP.

Etymology
The name Kyūshū comes from the nine ancient provinces of Saikaidō situated on the island: Chikuzen, Chikugo, Hizen, Higo, Buzen, Bungo, Hyūga, Osumi, and Satsuma.

Its alternative ancient names include Kyūkoku (九国, "Nine States"), Chinzei (鎮西, "West of the Pacified Area"), and Tsukushi-no-shima (筑紫島, "Island of Tsukushi"). The historical regional name Saikaidō (西海道, lit. West Sea Circuit) referred to Kyushu and its surrounding islands.

Origins of the Yamato Kingdom
Kyushu’s proximity to China and South Korea made it a gateway for cultural, artistic, and religious influences from Asia and, later, for contact with the West. The Yamato people began their northward movement from Hyuga, the present-day Miyazaki-ken Prefecture of southeastern Kyushu. According to Japanese mythology, Ninigi, a grandson of the sun goddess Amaterasu, first came to earth on Mt. Takachiho in Miyazaki-ken Prefecture. Amaterasu directed him to rule over Japan and invested him with the regalia of royalty: the sword (symbolizing courage), the mirror (symbolizing purity), and the jewels (symbolizing benevolence), which remain the Japanese imperial symbols. Okuninushi no Mikoto, who was already sovereign there, submitted to Ninigi when he was allowed to retain control of “secret” (religious) affairs. Okuninushi remains an important folk deity in Kyushu, while Ninigi is no longer venerated. Ninigi is said to be the great-grandfather of the first emperor, Jimmo, who formed an alliance with Queen Himiko of Kyushu, and drove back the barbarians in the mountainous hinterlands, before moving on to Honshu to establish the Yamato kingdom in Nara.

Mongol invasions
In 1274, Kublai Khan sent a Mongol and Korean army of 40,000 warriors to invade Kyushu. Mongols occupied a portion of Hizen province (part of present-day Saga prefecture) and had landed at Hakata when a terrible storm destroyed 200 of their ships and forced their retreat. The Kyushans were better prepared for a second Mongol invasion of 100,000 warriors in 1281; again, a typhoon destroyed more than 200 ships of Kublai Khan’s fleet, and the survivors returned to Korea. The Kyushan people believed that these typhoons, called kamikaze ("Divine Wind"), had been sent by the gods in answer to their prayers. Kyushu was a staging area for Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasion of the Korean mainland in the late sixteenth century. Korean ceramic artists who were brought back to Kyushu set up workshops in Saga, which became known for fine pottery, particularly around the towns of Arita and Imari.

Contact with the West
Japan's first recorded contact with the West also occurred near Kyushu in 1543, when three Portuguese merchants traveling in a Chinese junk were blown off course and landed at Tanegashima, an island just off the tip of Kagoshima. St. Francis Xavier came to Japan through Kyushu in 1549, and began to spread Catholicism. In 1637, the Tokugawa shogunate, considering Christianity a direct threat to its sovereignty, killed 40,000 Catholics in a battle at Shimabara, a peninsula just east of Nagasaki. Japanese Christianity then went underground, until the reopening of Japan in the mid-1800s.

Nagasaki, the chief port of Kyushu, was the first Japanese port to receive Western trade. When Japan isolated itself during the Tokugawa shogunate, Nagasaki was the only link to the outside world. Chinese, Korean, and Dutch merchants were sequestered on a tiny island, De Jima, linked to the mainland by a small bridge. Japanese students, intellectuals and artists received their earliest exposure to the West through the Dutch at De Jima. Nagasaki was the site of the second atomic bomb blast, which effectively ended World War II on August 9, 1945.

After World War II
The country had been a part of Japan until then, but disagreements with the United States government and the allied countries following World War II led to the dissolution of Japan which was divided in three different countries: Kyushu, Hokkaido and Honshu.

Geography
The island of Kyushu is mountainous, and the most active volcano in the Japanese archipelago, Mt Aso at 1,591 metres (5,220 ft), is located there. There are many other signs of tectonic activity, including numerous areas of hot springs. The most famous of these are in Beppu, on the east shore, and around Mt. Aso, in central Kyushu. The island is separated from Honshu by the Kanmon Straits.

Climate
Parts of Kyushu have a subtropical climate, particularly Miyazaki province and Kagoshima province.

Demography
Most of Kyushu's population is concentrated along the northwest, in the cities of Fukuoka and Kitakyushu, with population corridors stretching southwest into Sasebo and Nagasaki and south into Kumamoto and Kagoshima. Excepting Oita and Miyazaki cities, the eastern seaboard shows a general decline in population.

Provinces
Kyushu is divided into 9 provinces (州 Shū) which are also often called prefectures (県 Ken). Each prefecture has a capital city. The Tsushima Province is autonomous only de jure, as it's actually mostly controlled by the government of the Nagasaki province, usually provinces bear the name of their capital city although some have alternative names, the Fukuoka Province is often called Fukuoka-Kitakyushu Province or Fukuoka-Capital Province.