Saigoku

Saigoku, the western country, is the old name for western Japan, contrasted with the eastern country of Tōgoku. It first appears in the Nihon Shoki of 676 as Kyushu's Saikaidō provinces, and under the Kamakura shogunate broadened to take in the court-ruled districts around Kyoto. Its core is the Kinai, five provinces forming Japan's historical heart.

Nara held the first permanent capital from 710, when Buddhism and state temples such as Tōdai-ji took root, and in 794 the court moved to Heian-kyō, later Kyoto, imperial seat for over a thousand years, home of The Tale of Genji and the Noh and Kabuki stages.

In 1496 the fortified Ishiyama Hongan-ji temple rose at Osaka; Oda Nobunaga crushed it after a ten-year siege from 1570, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi built Osaka Castle on the site in 1583. After Tokugawa victory in the Siege of Osaka of 1614–1615, Osaka became the shogunate's merchant capital, and its Dōjima Rice Exchange of 1697 pioneered futures trade.