Regions & prefectures
JapanRegions & prefectures
Kumamoto
The world’s largest inhabited caldera, a castle besieged in 1877 and a black bear mascot.
- Capital
- Kumamoto
- Status
- Prefecture
- Region
- Kyūshū and Okinawa
- Must-see
- The Mount Aso caldera
- Local specialty
- Basashi, karashi renkon, Kumamoto ramen
The Mount Aso caldera, twenty-five kilometres by eighteen, holds fifty thousand inhabitants, rice fields and a railway line inside the collapsed crater itself. Kumamoto castle, reputed impregnable, held out for fifty-four days against Saigō Takamori’s siege during the Satsuma Rebellion. The prefecture also produced Japan’s most profitable mascot, Kumamon, whose royalty-free image has earned local producers billions of yen.
What to see there
Places, dishes and traditions tied to this territory.
In the magazine
Articles that cover this topic.