Okayama

Okayama (ōkä`yämä), city (1990 pop. 593,730), capital of Okayama prefecture, SW Honshu, Japan, on an inlet of the Inland Sea. It is a railroad hub and industrial and marketing center. Machinery, cotton textiles, chemicals, and rubber goods are produced in Okayama. The city has a 16th-century feudal castle, an 18th-century park, and Okayama Univ., which has a famous medical college. Okayama prefecture (1990 pop. 1,925,913), 2,721 sq mi (7,047 sq km), which relies mainly on agriculture, has an oil refinery and automobile, petrochemical, and steel industries.

---

Okayama

a city in SW Japan, on W Honshu on the Inland Sea. Pop.: 621 809 (2002 est.)

---

Okayama 

a prefecture in Japan, on the southwestern part of the island of Honshu. Area, 7,100 sq km; population, 1,749,000 (1973), more than 60 percent urban. The administrative center is the city of Okayama.

More than half of the territory of Okayama Prefecture is occupied by hills and mountains; along the coast of the Inland Sea there are alluvial lowlands. About 15 percent of the land in the prefecture is cultivated. There are terraced mountain slopes everywhere. The main farm crops are rice (1971 harvest, 258,000 tons), barley, and wheat. Animal husbandry is only slightly developed. There is coastal fishing, and also logging.

Okayama Prefecture accounted for 2.2 percent of the value of Japanese industrial production in 1970. Pyrites are mined at the Yanahara deposits. There is also mining of uranium and iron ore, and granite, talc, and kaolin are quarried. There are saltworks along the coast. The main branches of manufacturing industry are transportation machine-building, chemicals, metallurgy, petroleum refining, and food processing. Among local handicrafts are production of tatami mats and of ceramic and porcelain objects.

---

Okayama 

a city in Japan, on the southwestern part of the island of Honshu; administrative center of Okayama Prefecture. Commercial, distribution, and cultural center of western Japan (the Chugoku-Katsuyama region). Population, 375,000 (1973). The textiles industry produces cottons, woolens, and artificial silk. Other industry includes machine building (electrical machinery and shipbuilding), chemicals, paper, food processing, and pottery and ceramics. There is cottage-industry production of porcelain and tatami mats. The port of Uno serves Okayama. There is a university.