The Kanto region lies on the east side of Honshu, the largest of the Japanese islands, and it embraces the Greater Tokyo Area, along with seven other prefectures. Over forty-two million people are estimated to live here, accounting for a third of the total population in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Amateur golf in the region is administered by the Kanto Golf Federation, which was founded with just eight golf clubs in 1935. Today, the federation looks after more than 500 golf clubs across the ten prefectures of Tokyo.

The course at Tokyo Golf Club is undoubtedly one of the best layouts in Kanto, and recent restoration work by Gil Hanse has gone a long way to consolidating the layout’s position within our Asian Top 100 ranking chart.

Both the East and the West courses at Kasumigaseki are fine old tracks from the early 1930s that seem to improve with age, as does the course at Oarai, which was laid out by Seichi Inoue a couple of decades later.

Like Tokyo, an American architect has recently upgraded Abiko’s course. This time, the person involved was Brian Silva and his work entailed replacing the old double greens for a single, top spec putting surface on every hole.