Mutsu Province The Meiji Mutsu Province was a region in the northernmost part of the main island that corresponds to today's Aomori Prefecture. At the same time, while the characters of the name were unchanged, the official reading was changed to the "on'yomi" version "Rikuō". Mutsu Province Mutsu Province is also known as or . The term is often used to refer to the combined area of Mutsu and the neighboring province Dewa which make up the Tōhoku region. Mutsu, on northern Honshū, was one of the last provinces to be formed as land was taken from the indigenous Emishi and became
Japan its major contributions to science and modern technology. The Japanese word for Japan is , which is pronounced "Nihon" or "Nippon" and literally means "the origin of the sun". The character means "sun" or "day"; means "base" or "origin". The compound therefore means "origin of the sun" and is the source of the popular Western epithet "Land of the Rising Sun". The earliest record of the name "Nihon" appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, the "Old Book of Tang". At the end of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan requested that "Nihon" be used as