I posted this link yesterday without the following text. Sorry for the mistake. – Kirk
This interesting article has one mistake:
“This phase of the project is called the “Hi no Kuni Restoration Arc.” (‘Hi no Kuni’ refers to the land of the rising sun - that is, Japan.)”
As many of you are probably aware, 火の国 (Hi no kuni; land of fire) refers to Kumamoto, not “the land of the rising sun,” which would be “hi no izuru kuni” (日の出ずる国).
Actually, according to the following Japanese Wikipedia article, Hinokuni originally referred to an area that includes modern Nagasaki, Saga, and Kumamoto. The Wikipedia article is very brief but, it seems to indicate that the “hi” (火 – fire) morphed into “hi” (肥 – fertility) and then the whole area was divided into front (前; zen) and back (後; go) to become 肥前 (Hizen – Nagasaki and Saga) and 肥後 (Higo – Kumamoto):
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/火国
Since the Wikipedia article is very brief, I looked for another Japanese article to get some confirmation and found this:
https://jpnculture.net/hinokuni/
This fits with my summary but it also discusses other theories about the origin on “Hinokuni.” If I have time, I may come back to this later but for now, I think it’s safe to say that “Hinokuni” (火の国) and “Higo” (肥後), both of which refer to what we now know as Kumamoto, seem to have a historical connection.
– Kirk