Area of Tōkai

The area of Tōkai (in Japanese 東海地方, literally the area of the sea of the east) corresponds to the central part of the peaceful coast of the island of Honshu. It is a subset of the Chūbu.

Definitions

One can define Tōkai as the whole of the prefectures of Mie, Gifu, Shizuoka and Aichi. This definition is the most used definition, in particular by the Japanese ministries (e.g.: office of the financial businesses of the Tokay of the ministry for finances), but also by various organization as the Tōkai branch of NTT Docomo.

Certain media exclude the prefecture from Shizuoka when they speak about the Tokay. One speaks then, to avoid any ambiguity, of Tōkai 3 prefectures. This restrictive definition corresponds also in the broad sense of the area of Chūkyō (capital of the center, Nagoya). One as often excludes north from the prefecture of Gifu, thus sometimes as the south of the prefecture of Mie. Certain definitions are on the contrary broader, going to the prefectures of Toyama and Ishikawa (at the edge of the sea of Japan).

This area is located between Kansai and Kanto, the two only more important areas, whose agglomerations Ōsaka-Kōbe-Kyōto and Tokyo are respectively the urban centres.

Nagoya is the principal city of Tōkai.

Economy and demography

The area of Tōkai counts more than 10 million inhabitants, and its GDP almost reached the 540 billion dollars US in 1998. The GDP of this area corresponds almost to that of the Canada. The prefecture of Aichi is most important by far in demographic and economic term. Indeed the populations of the four prefectures generally considered as formant Tōkai are distributed as follows:

The area is presented in the form of a pivot of the Japanese manufacturing sector, in particular thanks to the presence of Toyota in the prefecture of Aichi. The area was host of the World Fair of 2005, which was the occasion of the inauguration of an airport of first class with Nagoya, the International airport of Chubu.

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