Located in the center of the prefecture, this area was called Sunpu, short for Suruga-Fuchu, because the kokufu, or provincial office of Suruga Province, was located there. This area has long been a key point of transportation between Japan’s East and West. In 1607, Sunpu Castle became the residence of Tokugawa Ieyasu after he retired as Shogun. From that time, the town at the castle’s foot flourished on a par with Edo in the same era. Geographically, the Shizuoka area is famous for the cultivation of commercial crops such as tea and mandarin oranges, taking advantage of the complex landscape that links the northern mountains to the sea. It is also well-known for the abundance of seafood caught in Suruga Bay.

The origin of the name, Tootoumi, lies in the fact that Lake Hamana (Totsu Awaumi; lit: “distant fresh-water lake”) is located far from Kyoto, as opposed to Omi, now Lake Biwa (Chikatsu Awaumi; lit: “near fresh-water lake”), which is close to the ancient capital. Lake Hamana is a brackish lake in which fresh water and seawater mix, where various kinds of fish and shellfish are caught. It also has a lively aquaculture industry, with eel, soft-shelled turtle, and sweetfish farmed in its waters. In this area, a variety of industries, including textiles, musical instruments, and transportation equipment, grew and flourished thanks to the advanced industrial technology that developed from the cotton textile industry of the Edo period. Consequently, the area gave birth to many world-famous companies.

The Izu region refers to the whole of the Izu Peninsula at the easternmost tip of Shizuoka Prefecture. It is formed by the way the mountain range, starting from Hakone, that juts out into the Pacific Ocean Lifestyles and culture that depend on fishing and forestry are practiced in this area, which also has many hot spring resorts with abundant hot spring water. The area was also home to many “wind-waiting harbors” such as Shimoda, making Izu an important transit point for ships en route to Edo.

Fuji Sanroku, the area at the foot of Mt. Fuji, is a typical volcanic-ash soil zone, with expanses of broadleaf forest at the higher altitudes. The lower area developed as upland farming fields. During the Edo period, rice paddy development progressed, using the abundant spring water from Mt. Fuji and the Fukara (Hakone) Watergate tunnel.

Although, as an administrative district, the Hokuen area belongs to Hamamatsu City, a different lifestyle from the low-lying areas had developed there since ancient times, and it has a strong tradition of folk culture that has been passed down since the medieval period. Th Hokuen area, the Mikawa area of Aichi Prefecture, and the southern part of Nagano Prefecture, together form a single cultural zone known as “San-shin-en.”

Egawa Hidetatsu, the local governor of Nirayama in Izu during the Bakumatsu period. He was known not only for his great administrative ability, but also for demonstrating his talent in a variety of fields, including reforming the military administration for Japan’s coastal defenses, which was an urgent issue at that time. He is also famous as the first person in Japan to bake bread (similar to a hard biscuit), after he noted bread’s usefulness as a portable food for soldiers. In honor of the day he baked that first loaf of bread on April 12, 1842, the 12th of each month has been designated as “Bread Day” in Japan.

It is believed that paddy rice cultivation was introduced to Japan about 3,000 years ago and had spread throughout this region by around the third century BCE. The Toro Site, discovered in 1943 at a site where a munitions factory was to be built, was the first archeological site in Japan where remains of wet-rice paddy fields were found. As the ruins of a settlement were also found, it has long been considered as a typical farming community of the Yayoi period. It is known that, for 300 years or so from around the 1st century CE, the area was struck many times over by floods, and that the area changed repeatedly from era to era, being rice paddies only in certain periods and rice paddies and settlement at other times.

From around the end of the Edo period, a farming method that used horses to cultivate dry-paddy fields was introduced in various places, with the aim of producing higher yields. A prerequisite of this new method was the consolidation of the cultivated land. Prior to the revision of rice fields in 1887 and the enactment of the Farmland Consolidation Act in 1899, the Shizuoka-style Land Consolidation was implemented by Tarouma Nagura. In 1872, Nagura improved the curved roads and ridges of his paddy fields to create a paddy plot with straight lines. Straightening the paddy fields brought many benefits. They included improved efficiency of cultivation and weeding, smoother water supply and drainage, and less pest damage thanks to better ventilation. Of course, yields increased as well, and in the following year, 1873, with the support of the villagers who had seen the results of Nagura’s efforts, farmland consolidation started in all farmland in Hikoshima Village (today’s Fukuroi and Iwata Cities), an area of just under 44 hectares.

Izu is blessed with a temperate climate and an abundance of spring water, making it the perfect location to grow shiitake mushrooms and wasabi. The first artificial cultivation of shiitake mushrooms in Japan is said to have occurred in Izu in 1741. Izu has about 200 days a year that are ideal for growing shiitake mushrooms, more than any other production area. This allows them to be grown at a slower pace to produce the thick mushrooms known as “Donko,” which are shipped from Izu.
Wasabi cultivation is thought to have started in 1744, when a man called Itagaki Kanshiro, who visited Suruga to instruct the locals on shiitake cultivation, also introduced wasabi cultivation techniques. During the Bunka and Bunsei era (1804-1830), nigiri-zushi, which originated in Edo, rapidly became popular, leading to a sharp rise in demand for wasabi, which became a major source of income for the Izu region.
From the Meiji period onward, shiitake mushroom exports to China expanded, and even today, shiitake mushrooms from Izu are valued for their high quality. Wasabi from Izu has the top share of the domestic market in terms of handled volume.

Miho no Matsubara, a pine grove on the east coast of the Miho Peninsula that extends from Shimizu Port into Suruga Bay, has been known as a spot of scenic beauty since ancient times. In 2013, the pine groves were registered as part of the World Heritage Site, “Fujisan, sacred place and source of artistic inspiration.” In the pine grove, the setting of the Noh play, Hagoromo, a Japanese black pine known as Hagoromo no Matsu, believed to be 650 years old, stretches out its branches.

In the past, the environment of the coast of the Enshu-nada Sea was extremely harsh, with its sand beaches enlarged by large amounts of earth and sand from the Tenryu River and the intense Enshu no karakkaze (dry winds from the mountains) blowing from the southwest, exposing the coast to large volumes of flying sand. Since the end of the Edo period, embankments and coastal forests have been established in a diagonal direction, redirecting the strong winds and flying sand toward the sea, thus stabilizing the environment of the hinterlands and allowing them to be used as farmland. Those coastal forests have been developed in multiple layers for over a century, and the parts that still remain extend for a length of over 50 km. Fields have been cultivated between the forests, where sweet potatoes, carrots, etc., are grown.

It was after the middle of the Edo period that cotton cultivation spread throughout Japan. In particular, Enshu (Tootoumi Province) produced good quality cotton, alongside Senshu (Izumi Province, the southwestern part of Osaka Prefecture) and Mikawa (the eastern part of Aichi Prefecture). Cotton fabrics that were hand-woven by cotton farmers were sold, but in 1845, the lord of the Hamamatsu Domain promoted machine weaving as a side job for his retainers, which led to the further development of cotton fabrics. The characteristic vertical stripes eventually came to be known as "Enshujima.” The automatic loom invented by the founder of Toyota, Sakichi Toyoda, in 1886, dramatically boosted production. The land of Enshu, where advanced technology and craftsmanship were cultivated, would later lead to the birth of global manufacturers of motorcycles, automobiles, and musical instruments.