Taiheiyō Belt

The Taiheiyō Belt, literally the Pacific Belt, is Japan's most significant urban and industrial concentration, a megalopolis stretching roughly 1,200 kilometers along the country's Pacific coastline from Ibaraki Prefecture in the northeast to Fukuoka Prefecture in the southwest. Its development follows the Kantō, Kinai, and Nōbi plains, geographic features that make large-scale urbanization possible in an otherwise mountainous country. As of 2011 the belt was home to about 80 million people, concentrating the majority of Japan's population, and it generated roughly 70 percent of the nation's economic output in 2007, valued at approximately four to five trillion US dollars. The region is served by the Tōkaidō-Sanyō rail corridor and the Shinkansen high-speed line connecting its major cities, and the term itself dates to 1960, when an Economic Commission report aimed at doubling national income identified the belt as the core of Japan's industrial infrastructure. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/