Toyama
Tateyama mountains (3,000m) meet Toyama Bay (firefly squid); #1 pharma per capita from Edo medicine sellers. 2026: extreme geography as tourism asset.
Toyama exists between mountains and sea in extreme proximity. The Tateyama mountain range—with peaks over 3,000 meters—rises directly from Toyama Bay, creating one of the world's most dramatic elevation gradients. This geography produces the firefly squid (hotaruika) that glow bioluminescent blue in spring—a spectacle unique to this bay.
The pharmaceutical industry traces to Toyama's Edo-period medicine sellers who traveled Japan with portable medicine chests. Today, Toyama produces more pharmaceutical products per capita than any prefecture. The industry evolved from folk medicine to modern pharma, maintaining the distribution networks that 17th-century salesmen established.
Aluminum smelting and manufacturing also cluster here, powered by hydroelectric dams in the mountains. The combination of pharma, metal fabrication, and precision manufacturing creates an industrial density unusual for Japan Sea prefectures. By 2026, Toyama bets on pharmaceutical innovation and industrial tradition while marketing its natural extremes—the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, the firefly squid, the dramatic landscape that made isolation productive rather than limiting.