Aichi prefecture is located on the South-central coast of Japan. It is bordered by Gifu and Nagano to the North, Shizuoka to the East, the Pacific Ocean to the South, and the Pacific Ocean, Shiga, and Gifu to the West.
The capital city of Nagoya is located along the Western coast of Aichi, and is where the majority of the population lives. The rest of the population of Aichi is more sparsely spread out around the rest of the mountainous prefecture.
The region that is now Aichi prefecture used to be two provinces called Owari and Mikawa. In 1868, the two provinces merged during the Meiji Restoration, which re-imposed imperial rule in Japan. In 1871, most of previous Owari became the Nagoya prefecture, and the remainder became the Nukata prefecture. The next year (1872), Nagoya prefecture was renamed to Aichi prefecture, and merged with Nukata prefecture later in the year.
The flag of Aichi was adopted in 1950 after a prefecture-wide competition. It has the symbol of Aichi, which is the stylized Hiragana (style of script) character for Aichi. The character also consists of a stylized wave and sunrise, representing Aichi's location on the coast.
Aichi gets its name from the oldest existing Japanese collection of poetry called the Man'yōshū (meaning "collection of ten thousand leaves"). In a poem within the Man'yōshū, it refers to a region of current Aichi as Ayuchi, the original name of the Aichi prefecture.
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