Ehime

Ehime

(āhē`mā), prefecture (1990 pop. 1,515,027), 2,188 sq mi (5,667 sq km), NE Shikoku, Japan. Matsuyama is the capital and chief port. The region is bounded on the N by the Inland Sea and on the W by Hoyo Strait. Mountainous, it rises to 6,497 ft (1,980 m) in Mt. Ishizuchi, the highest point on Shikoku. The region has extensive coniferous forests and orchards; rice, wheat, soybeans, and mandarin oranges are grown, and livestock is raised. Fishing is an important industry, along with the production of chemicals, fertilizer, and machinery. Imabari, Saijo, Hashihama, and Yawatahama are the major manufacturing centers.

Ehime

 

a prefecture in western Shikoku Island, Japan. Area, including offshore islands, 5,700 sq km. Population, 1.5 million (1975). The capital is Matsuyama.

Ehime is an agricultural and industrial prefecture: approximately 30 percent of those employed work in agriculture and 22 percent in manufacturing. The contribution of various branches of manufacturing industry to the total industrial output of Ehime in 1971 was as follows: the chemical industry, approximately 25 percent; machine building, chiefly transportation machine building, 23 percent; non-ferrous metallurgy, 11.5 percent; the pulp and paper industry, 10 percent; food processing, 8 percent; and textiles, 7 percent.

The Toyo territorial-production complex in the center of Niihama is being created in the northwest and will include petrochemical, machine-building, nonferrous metallurgical, and power engineering enterprises. In 1978 the Ishe Atomic Power Station was under construction. Sulfur pyrites and iron and copper ores are extracted in the Besshi mining region.

Sixteen percent of the land is under cultivation, the principal crops being rice, barley, wheat, beans, tea, and tobacco. Ehime is one of Japan’s leading producers of citrus fruit.

S. A. DEBABOV