250px, Location of Yoshino Province c. 716. was a Japanese

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...

in the area of

Nara Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Nara Prefecture has a population of 1,321,805 and has a geographic area of . Nara Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture to the north, Osaka Prefecture to the northwest, Wakayama P ...

on the island of

Honshū , 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 separa ...

. Bodart-Bailey, Beatrice M. (1999)
''Kaempfer's Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed,'' p. 122
It was a short-lived special division of the

provinces of Japan were first-level administrative divisions of Japan from the 600s to 1868. Provinces were established in Japan in the late 7th century under the Ritsuryō law system that formed the first central government. Each province was divided into and ...

, a part of

Kinai is a Japanese term denoting an ancient division of the country. ''Kinai'' is a name for the ancient provinces around the capital Nara and Heian-kyō. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Kinai''" in . The five provinces were called ''go-kinai ...

. It was composed of only one district, . Its extent roughly coincides with that of today's Yoshino District plus Gojō city. Yoshino was established by separating Yoshino District from

Yamato Province was a province of Japan, located in Kinai, corresponding to present-day Nara Prefecture in Honshū. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric (2005). "Yamato" in . It was also called . Yamato consists of two characters, 大 "great", and 和 " Wa". At first, the ...

. The time of its founding is unknown, but it is thought that it happened at around the same time as the establishment of in 716. The unit name “” () was different from the “” () of normal provinces. No record remains of the reasons for their establishment. Both new provinces were unusually small and contained secondary palaces: the in the Yoshino province and the Chinu Palace in Izumi. Yoshino Province was abolished some time after the year 738 and its territory was absorbed back into

References

Other websites

Murdoch's map of provinces, 1903

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yoshino Province Former provinces of Japan History of Nara Prefecture