Chūgoku literally means "middle country", but the origin of the name is unclear. Historically, Japan was divided into a number of
provinces called
koku, which were in turn classified according to both their power and their distances from the administrative center in
Kansai. Under the latter classification, most provinces are divided into , , and . Therefore, one explanation is that
Chūgoku was originally used to refer to the collection of "middle countries" to the west of the capital. However, only five (fewer than half) of the provinces normally considered part of Chūgoku region were in fact classified as middle countries, and the term never applied to the many middle countries to the east of Kansai. Therefore, an alternative explanation is that
Chūgoku referred to provinces between Kansai and
Kyūshū, which was historically important as the link between Japan and mainland Asia. Historically,
Chūgoku referred to the 16 provinces of and , which led to the region's alternative name described below. However, because some of the easternmost provinces were later subsumed into prefectures based primarily in Kansai, those areas are, strictly speaking, not part of the Chūgoku region in modern usage. In
Japanese, the characters and the reading
Chūgoku are also used to mean "
China". The same
characters are used in
Chinese to refer to China, but pronounced
Zhōngguó in
Mandarin, lit. "Middle Kingdom" or "Middle Country" (
Wade Giles:
Chung1-kuo2). It is similar to the use of the
West Country in English for a region of England. However, before the end of the
Second World War, China was more commonly called in order to avoid confusing the Chūgoku region. Due to the extensive use of this word during the
Sino-Japanese War, the term
shina has become an
offensive word and was abandoned thereafter, and
Chūgoku has since then been used instead of
shina. In modern times, primarily in the tourism industry, for the same purpose, the Chūgoku region is also called the "San'in‐San'yō region".
San'in ("yin of the
mountains") is the northern part facing the
Sea of Japan.
San'yō ("yang of the mountains") is the southern part facing the
Seto Inland Sea. These names were created using
the yin and yang‐based place‐naming scheme. The city of
Hiroshima, the "capital" of the Chūgoku region, was rebuilt after
being destroyed by an
atomic bomb in 1945, and is now an industrial metropolis of more than one million people.
Overfishing and
pollution reduced the productivity of the Inland Sea fishing grounds; and
San'yo is an area concentrated on
heavy industry. In contrast,
San'in is less industrialized with an
agricultural economy. ==Geography==