# Iburi Subprefecture



## aesir

Hello: What does Iburi mean? I assume it's a Japanese word (or words) written in the Latin alphabet. And if I am right, how would one write it in Japanese? I found it in this link, which talks about Iburi Subprefecture (胆振総合振興局), a subprefecture of Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan. Thank you.


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## SoLaTiDoberman

iburi = いぶり (written in hiragana) = 胆振 (written in kanji)
It's the name of the place.

胆 itself may mean "liver" or "gall bladder."
振 itself may mean "to swing."
But 胆振 is a proper name and we  usually don't think of the meaning of it.


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## frokat

+1 to the above post.

I think this is an example of 当て字: Ateji - Wikipedia

Ateji is the term for situations where a word wasn’t originally written with kanji, but a kanji writing for it has been created.

For place names in Hokkaido especially, many probably originated as Ainu place names. So they might have had a meaning in the past, but maybe in Ainu, not in Japanese. I understand that’s the case with Sapporo, for example. And probably throughout Japan there are many examples of places with names that originated in deep prehistory, before kanji came to Japan, and the meaning they had is long forgotten!


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## aesir

Ah ~ thank you all so very much for your detailed explanations!


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## Flaminius

胆振 is a new name assigned to this area of Hokkaidō in 1867.  The namesake is 膽振鉏 (_Iburisahe_, 膽 > 胆), a community or tribe of Emishi (蝦夷) recorded in _Nihonshoki _(I tentatively translate it into "Chronicles of Japan").  This early-8th-century history reports numerous expeditions by Yamato (Old Japanese, more or less) generals into lands of _Emishi_.  In Annals of Saimē (i.e., vol. 26), a general gathered _Emishis _to a banquet after a clash with them.  Among those invited were twenty _Emishis _of _Iburisahe_.  The influence of Yamatos reached to Hokkaidō in the 8th century at the latest, but we will probably never know with any surety where the ancient _Iburisahe_ was.  The following is the commentary of Chronicles of Japan that I looked up:


> 磐舟柵(三〇六頁注九)から東南に望む山形県境の飯豊山支峰に朳差(いぶりさし)山があるが、本文での列挙の順では、津軽よりも北の地名らしい。北海道の胆振は、蝦夷地開拓が課題となった江戸時代の学者の説に基づき、明治初年に命名されたもの。


坂本太郎ら校注『日本書紀: 下』 日本古典文学大系新装版 岩波書店、1993年、337ページ、注30。


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## aesir

Wow ~ thank you all so very much for the detailed explanations!


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## aesir

I just learned that another way to say Emishi is Ebisu. And it seems Ezo is also yet another word that is interchangeable with Emishi ... 

And I also found that there are the Yamato people and the Wajin people ... 

wow


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## Flaminius

No, Ezo is an older name for Hokkaidō and the inhabitants there; mostly the Ainus, that is.  Emishi and Ebisu are exonyms vaguely applied by the Yamato to peoples of different culture from their own that lived in Tōhoku or further north.  Since there is very little written evidence to the Yamato being in Hokkaidō before the 11th century, there is no knowing just how much of the recorded Emishi/Ebisu were the Ainus or their precursors.  Please be advised that at least conceptually Emishi/Ebisu and Ezo are two different things.


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## aesir

Thank you once again for another detailed response! I thought Ezo and Emishi/Ebisu were interchangeable because of the following 2 links - Maybe I didn't read them the right way ... 

First link - 

The Ainu or the Aynu, in the historical Japanese texts the Ezo (蝦夷), are an indigenous people of Japan (Hokkaido, and formerly northeastern Honshu) and Russia (Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and the Kamchatka Peninsula).

Second link - 

Noun 蝦夷 (hiragana えぞ, rōmaji Ezo) (historical) Emishi: ancient ethnic group that once lived on what is now the Kantō, Hokuriku and Tōhoku regions, likely as far as Hokkaido, possibly related to the Ainu people; dubbed as "barbarians" or "savages" by the Yamato (regional) Short for 蝦夷松 (Ezo matsu): the Yezo spruce, Picea jezoensis

It's confusing. Thank you!


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