Adachi

Adachi comprises the wooded hills and small basins of southern Fukushima, where routes from the Kantō plain passed north through Iwashiro Province toward Ōu. Its name survives as a district even after repeated municipal mergers, but the older landscape was formed by scattered farming villages rather than a single city. Rivers supplied rice paddies, while timber, charcoal and upland fields supported communities along the mountain roads.

During the medieval period the district was divided between the Hatakeyama and Kira families. Nihonmatsu Castle was established above a hill at the edge of the district in 1414, and the Hatakeyama lords used it through the long civil wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Date Masamune took the castle in 1586, after which Gamo, Uesugi and other regional rulers held it as a strategic outpost guarding roads north from the Kantō.

In 1643 Niwa Mitsushige entered Nihonmatsu with a domain worth 100,700 koku. The Niwa rebuilt the castle and laid out the castle town, which became the administrative and market focus for Adachi villages. Rice was the formal measure of wealth, but forest work, silk, crafts and periodic markets supported rural households. The district entered the nineteenth century as a network of villages tied to Nihonmatsu, with mountain routes and seasonal work shaping local identity.