Current Time in Tokushima, Japan

Tokushima occupies the delta of the Yoshino River on the eastern coast of Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's four main islands. The city is built across a series of low islands and channels where the river reaches the sea, with the wooded cone of Mount Bizan rising directly behind the centre and the Kii Channel separating it from the main island of Honshu. Mountains fill the interior of the prefecture, and the climate is mild, with warm humid summers and mostly gentle winters.

Around a quarter of a million people live here, and the city is the capital of Tokushima Prefecture. Its economy combines agriculture and food processing, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and electronics, and it is home to a company whose invention of the blue light-emitting diode transformed lighting worldwide and led to a Nobel Prize. The surrounding countryside produces sudachi citrus, sweet potatoes and vegetables sent to markets in Osaka and Kobe.

The city grew around a castle built in the late sixteenth century by Hachisuka Iemasa, whose family governed the domain for nearly three hundred years. Wealth came from indigo, and Tokushima became the centre of Japan's dye trade, its merchants supplying the deep blue cloth worn across the country until chemical dyes arrived. The castle was lost in the Meiji period and much of the city was destroyed by bombing in 1945, but the moats, stone walls and a beautiful landscape garden survive, and the indigo tradition has been revived by craftspeople.

Tokushima is known above all for the Awa Odori, the largest dance festival in Japan. For four days each August tens of thousands of dancers in straw hats and summer kimono parade through the streets to the sound of shamisen, drums and flutes, chanting that dancers and watchers are equally foolish, so everyone might as well dance. The festival draws over a million visitors, and a dedicated hall in the city presents performances and exhibits throughout the year, with a ropeway from its roof climbing Mount Bizan for views over the delta and the sea.

Other attractions include the castle museum and Senshukaku garden, the Awa Jurobe Yashiki theatre where traditional puppet plays are staged, and the indigo dyeing workshops of the Yoshino valley. Just north of the city, the Naruto whirlpools churn between Shikoku and Awaji Island, a spectacular natural phenomenon viewed from boats and from a walkway beneath the bridge. Tokushima is also the starting point of the famous pilgrimage of eighty-eight temples that circles Shikoku, and pilgrims in white robes are a familiar sight.

Trains run along the coast and into the mountains, express buses cross the great bridges to Kobe and Osaka in about two hours, and a small airport serves Tokyo. Tokushima University, noted for medicine and engineering, anchors the city's academic life.

Tokushima is best known for its dance, its indigo and its whirlpools, offering an authentic and welcoming introduction to rural Japan.