Miyazaki Prefecture Specialties, Souvenirs, Shrines and Temples, and Sightseeing | 47 Prefectures Guide

Miyazaki is a prefecture where places that appear in Hyuga mythology still remain as place names today. in total.

Specialties

Miyazaki ranks among Japan’s top prefectures for both the number of broiler chickens raised and the number of pigs raised making it a major livestock prefecture.

Charcoal-grilled jidori chicken is cooked quickly over flames until the outside turns black as a dish. Jidori chicken meat is firm, making it difficult to eat if grilled in the usual way. Rather than treating that firmness as a flaw, it is transformed into aroma with strong heat. It is the same idea as Kochi’s seared bonito.

Hiyajiru, a farmers’ dish of cold soup made with grilled fish and miso poured over rice, mangoes, hyuganatsu citrus, and shochu.

Souvenirs

Cheese manju, shochu. And wooden swords from Miyakonojo.

Miyakonojo City is also known as a production area for bamboo bows used in kyudo archery. It is a prefecture of wood and bamboo.

Shrines and Temples

Takachiho Shrine (Takachiho Town) is a place associated with the legend of the descent of the heavenly grandson. according to estimates.

Here, Yokagura night kagura is performed in private homes and kagura lodges in each village every year from November through February. From evening until the next morning, 33 dances are offered over the course of a single night. It is a nationally designated Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property. It continues not as a spectacle, but as something the people of the village do for their own community. (At the shrine’s kagura hall, four selected dances are performed publicly throughout the year.)

Udo Jingu Shrine (Nichinan City) is a shrine with its main sanctuary inside a coastal cave. It is said to be the birthplace of Emperor Jimmu’s father, and is regarded as a deity of safe childbirth.

Aoshima Shrine in Miyazaki City, on an island surrounded by the Devil’s Washboard; Amano Iwato Shrine in Takachiho Town, with Amano Yasukawara; and Tsuno Shrine.

Sightseeing

Takachiho Gorge is, is a gorge formed as the Gokase River carved through rock created when pyroclastic flows from Mount Aso cooled and hardened. The rows of columnar rocks are traces of cracks that formed as the lava cooled.

Aoshima, the Nichinan Coast, Udo Jingu Shrine, Ebino Plateau, and the Saitobaru Burial Mounds.

Traditional Crafts

Nationally designated items are Miyakonojo Daikyu and authentic Oshima tsumugi silk: two items.

Miyakonojo longbows are said to account for the majority of bamboo bow production in Japan. Bamboo and wax tree wood are layered alternately and joined with glue. No metal or screws are used; strength comes only from the resilience of the materials. It is said to take more than half a year to finish one bow.

For details, see 【VILLAGE Report vol.7】Layering bamboo and wood in turn

Articles About This Prefecture

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References: Miyazaki Prefecture, Miyazaki City, Takachiho Town, Miyakonojo City, Nichinan City, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Association for the Promotion of Traditional Craft Industries — Value Village Editorial Team