The is a river in eastern

Honshu , historically called , is the largest and most populous island of Japan. It is located south of Hokkaidō across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyūshū across the Kanmon Straits. The island separ ...

, Japan. It flows through the prefectures of Tochigi and Ibaraki and empties to the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

. More than 50 species of fish live in the river, including

dace A dace is a small fish that can be one of many different species. The unmodified name is usually a reference to the common dace (''Leuciscus leuciscus''). This, like most fish called "daces", belongs to the family Cyprinidae, mostly in subfamily ...

chum salmon The chum salmon (''Oncorhynchus keta''), also known as dog salmon or keta salmon, is a species of anadromous salmonid fish from the genus '' Oncorhynchus'' (Pacific salmon) native to the coastal rivers of the North Pacific and the Beringian A ...

, ayu, and

herring Herring are forage fish, mostly belonging to the family of Clupeidae. Herring often move in large schools around fishing banks and near the coast, found particularly in shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans, i ...

. The Japanese government categorizes it as a Class 1 river. With a length of , the Naka drains an area of , including parts of neighboring

Fukushima Prefecture Fukushima Prefecture (; ja, 福島県, Fukushima-ken, ) is a prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. Fukushima Prefecture has a population of 1,810,286 () and has a geographic area of . Fukushima Prefecture borders Miya ...

. Its source is at Nasu-dake in

Nikkō National Park is a national park in the Kantō region, on the main island of Honshū in Japan. The park spreads over three prefectures: Tochigi Prefecture, Tochigi, Gunma Prefecture, Gunma and Fukushima Prefecture, Fukushima, and was established in 1934. Hi ...

Naming

References

* ''Spring Comes with the Arrival of Dace - Naka River'',

NHK , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestr ...

1998

External links

(mouth) Rivers of Tochigi Prefecture Rivers of Ibaraki Prefecture Rivers of Fukushima Prefecture Rivers of Japan {{Japan-river-stub