is an inlet on the west side of the

Miura Peninsula is a peninsula located in Kanagawa, Japan. It lies south of Yokohama and Tokyo and divides Tokyo Bay, to the east, from Sagami Bay, to the west. Cities and towns on the Miura Peninsula include Yokosuka, Miura, Hayama, Zushi, and Kama ...

Kanagawa is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-densest at . Its geographic area of makes it fifth-smallest. Kanagaw ...

, Japan, facing

Sagami Bay lies south of Kanagawa Prefecture in Honshu, central Japan, contained within the scope of the Miura Peninsula, in Kanagawa, to the east, the Izu Peninsula, in Shizuoka Prefecture, to the west, and the Shōnan coastline to the north, while ...

on 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 contine ...

. It exits into neighbouring Moroiso inlet.

History

During historic times, the Aburatsubo inlet was selected by the feudal Miura family to build a series of fortifications, with Arai castle at its center. During the

Sengoku period The was a period in Japanese history of near-constant civil war and social upheaval from 1467 to 1615. The Sengoku period was initiated by the Ōnin War in 1467 which collapsed the feudal system of Japan under the Ashikaga shogunate. Variou ...

, the castle fell after a 3-year siege to the rival

Later Hōjō clan The was one of the most powerful samurai families in Japan in the Sengoku period and held domains primarily in the Kantō region. Their last name was simply Hōjō (北条) but in order to differentiate between the earlier Hōjō clan with the ...

, in the year 1516. The Hōjō later managed to unify most of the Kantō. According to some stories, the name Aburatsubo ("Oil Vase"), comes from the time when hundreds of

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of History of Japan#Medieval Japan (1185–1573/1600), medieval and Edo period, early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retai ...

, fleeing the troops of Hōjō, drowned in the waters of the inlet and left it a sea of blood.

Aburatsubo today

Aburatsubo is a "hurricane hole" where fishing boats from the area take refuge when a

typhoon A typhoon is a mature tropical cyclone that develops between 180° and 100°E in the Northern Hemisphere. This region is referred to as the Northwestern Pacific Basin, and is the most active tropical cyclone basin on Earth, accounting for a ...

arrives. The calm, protected waters of the inlet suggest they are the actual reason behind the name "Aburatsubo". Regardless of the reason, the adjacent Shirahige

shrine A shrine ( la, scrinium "case or chest for books or papers"; Old French: ''escrin'' "box or case") is a sacred or holy space dedicated to a specific deity, ancestor, hero, martyr, saint, daemon, or similar figure of respect, wherein they ...

, dedicated to Fukurojin, was built as thanks for the inlet's calmness.

References

Landforms of Kanagawa Prefecture Inlets of Japan {{Kanagawa-geo-stub