Ishu

was a province of Japan located in what is today part of western Mie Prefecture. Its abbreviated name was . Iga bordered on Ise, Ōmi, Yamato, and Yamashiro Provinces. Its roughly coincides with the modern municipalities of Iga and Nabari.Iga is classified as one of the provinces of the Tōkaidō. Under the Engishiki classification system, Iga was ranked as an inferior country ( gekoku) and a near country ( kingoku). Surrounded by mountains, historically, Iga Province was rather inaccessible due to extremely poor road conditions. However, the area is now relatively easy to access from nearby Nara and Kyoto, as well as the larger cities of Osaka and Nagoya.

Bio from Wikipedia - See more on en.wikipedia.org Text under CC-BY-SA license