Japan, called in Japanese Nihon or Nippon, is an island country situated in the Pacific Ocean, off the east coast of Asia. It lies east of China and Korea and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea in the south. Japan consists of over 3,000 islands, among which Hokkaido (Hokkaid), Honshu (Honsh), Shikoku, and Kyushu (Kysh) are the largest. Among many smaller islands there are the Ryukyu (Nansei) Islands which include the island of Okinawa, the Izu, Bonin (Ogsawara), and Volcano (Kazan). The area of the country is 377,835 sq km. Japan is among the most densely populated countries in the world and its population, mostly ethnically homogeneous, was 128,085,000 in 2005.
The capital city of Japan is Tokyo (Tky) which is considered one of the most populous cities in the world. Japanese national emblem is the Imperial Seal and the anthem is called "Kimi Ga Yo". The motto of the country is "peace and progress". Japan is separated from the eastern shores of North and South Korea and south-eastern Siberia by the Sea of Japan. To the north, the country is bounded by La Perouse (Soya) Strait which separates it from Russian Sakhalin Island, and by the Sea of Okhotsk. The north-eastern boundary of Japan is the southern Kuril Islands. Japan is separated from China by the East China Sea and to the east and south it is bounded by the Pacific.
Most of Japanese landscape is mountainous and rugged. Mountains comprise more than four-fifths of Japan's surface. The highest peak is Mount Fuji at an elevation of 12,388 feet (3,776 metres), which is among Japan's many active and dormant volcanoes.
Japan has been inhabited by people for tens of thousands of years however it is the first century BC when Japan's recorded history began. In the early centuries AD significant changes occurred in Japan due to the country contacts with China and Korea. The changes included Buddhism, Chinese writing system and various artistic forms that came from the continent. In the fourth and fifth centuries, when Yamato was the ruler, there were first attempts to unify the country. From the eighth to the twelfth century a great Japanese civilization developed, first at Nara then at Heian which is now Kyoto. Then Japan became dominated by military rulers and from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century the country remained in isolation from the outside world. When the country reopened, it established relationships with the western countries which resulted in tremendous changes that took place in Japan, whose aim was now to become a modern industrialised country. Therefore, Japan sought to enlarge its empire by acquiring large overseas areas. This policy resulted in conflict with the United States which led to Japan's defeat in World War II. After the war, Japan began developing so rapidly that its amazing economic growth placed the country among the wealthiest nations in the world. It has become a global leader in manufacturing and trading goods.
Modern Japan is a constitutional monarchy, based largely on the British system. The highest organ of the state power is bicameral parliament, called the National Diet (Kokkai), which consists of the lower house of the Japanese parliament, with 480 seats, elected in popular vote for four-year term. House of Councillors, the upper house, consists of 242 seats and its members are elected in popular vote every six years. The Japanese have universal adult (over twenty years old) suffrage and the election has a form of a secret ballot.
Japanese Cabinet, responsible to the Diet, consists of the Prime Minister, who is currently Junichiro Koizumi,and ministers of state. The Prime
Minister is chosen by the members of the Diet and has the power to appoint and remove ministers. Two main political parties in Japan are the liberal conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the liberal-socialist Democratic Party of Japan.
The remains of the imperial Japanese is the Imperial Household of Japan, headed by the Emperor, who is defined by the Constitution as "the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people". According to the Constitution, the sovereignty belongs to the Japanese people and the Emperor, in fact, holds no real power and is only responsible for performing ceremonial duties. Currently, Japanese emperor is Akihito.
The majority of the Japanese land is mountainous (about 80%) and soils are mostly poor, nevertheless it is possible to raise there a variety of crops due to abundant rainfall and mild temperatures.
Japan is exposed to frequent earth tremors and occasional volcanic activity, which result from the country's location on the Pacific Ring of Fire. Several times every century Japan is affected by earthquakes which often cause tsunamis. The earthquakes that took place most recently were the Chuetsu in 2004 and the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995.
The climate of varies greatly from north to south. There are six major climatic zones which depend on Japan's geographical features. The northernmost zone is Hokkaido. It has a temperate climate with cool summers and long, cold winters. Next climatic zone is Sea of Japan. There are often heavy snowfalls on Honshu's west coast in the wintertime. In the summer, the region is cooler than the Pacific area. However, the Föhn wind phenomenon sometimes causes extremely hot temperatures. In central Highlands climate is typically inland with significant temperature differences between day and nigh and between summer and winter. Another climatic zone is Seto Inland Sea. The weather there is mild throughout the year due to the Chugoku and Shikoku mountain chains which shelter the region from seasonal winds. The climatic zone of Pacific Ocean is characterized by cold winters and hot, humid summers which result from the southeast seasonal wind. Southwest Islands have subtropical climate-winters are warm and summers hot. There are heavy rains, especially during the rainy season and typhoons occur very often. Compulsory education has existed in Japan since 1872. Nowadays, it begins at the age of five and comprises elementary school and middle school which last for nine years. When children are fifteen years old, they continue with their education in a senior high school which lasts for three years. About 96% of high school graduates attend a university, junior college, trade school, or other post-secondary institution.
The most popular sport in Japan is sumo which is also the country's national sport. Every year, six major sumo tournaments take place in Japan. They are held in Tokyo (in January, May and September), in Osaka (in March), Nagoya (July) and Fukuoka (November), each of them lasts fifteen days.
Traditional Japanese sport includes also martial arts, among which judo, karate and kendo are the most popular. In the nineteenth century, when Japan reopened to the outside world, western sports, like rugby, football, ice skating or skiing also became popular. Nowadays, the most popular sport which involves the participation of the spectators is baseball, followed by golf, football, car racing or badminton.
Japanese administrative division consists of forty-seven prefectures which are the largest administrative subdivisions. Each of them has an elected governor and legislature, and an administrative bureaucracy. Among the prefectures are: Hokkaidō, Akita, Aomori, Fukushima, Iwate, Miyagi, Yamagata, Chiba, Gunma, Ibaraki, Kanagawa, Saitama, Tochigi, Tokyo, Aichi, Fukui, Gifu, Ishikawa, Nagano, Niigata, Shizuoka, Toyama, Yamanashi, Hyōgo, Kyoto, Mie, Nara, Osaka, Shiga, Wakayama, Hiroshima, Okayama, Shimane, Tottori, Yamaguchi, Ehime, Kagawa, Kōchi, Tokushima, Fukuoka, Kagoshima, Kumamoto, Miyazaki, Nagasaki, Oita, Saga, Okinawa. Every prefecture is divided into cities, towns and villages. The nomenclature is different in the case of Tokio, which is not only a capital city of the country but also a capital of Tokio prefecture. It consists of twenty-three cities, called the special wards. Currently, administrative reform has been implemented in Japan. The reform, whose aim is to cut administrative costs, reorganizes administrative division of the country, merging many of the cities, towns and villages with each other.
Buddhism and Shinto are principal religions in Japan. Buddhism arrived to Japan from China in the sixth century and evolved into numerous sects like, for example, Shingon, Jodo or Nicheren. Japanese culture and civilisation was significantly influenced by Chinese Confucianism. Christians comprise only 1% of the Japanese population.
Changing of the season is accompanied in Japan by various annual festivals, the most important of which are: New Year, Setsubun, Doll Festival, Children's Day, Tanabata Festival and Bon Festival.
New Year:
The passing of one year and the arrival of the next one is a very important moment for the Japanese. It is the most important festival on the calendar in the country. It lasts for three days and all companies and government offices are closed then Shogatsu is the name of the first month of the year and, at the same time, a period of celebrations connected with New Year. On the first day of New Year, Japanese families have special meal which consists of sake, traditional soup and rice cakes. On that day they try to forget all the bad memories connected with what happened to them last year. Another tradition of Shogatsu is decorations which the Japanese place above the entrances to their houses and which are supposed to protect their homes from evil spirits. The decorations include straw festoons and branches of pine.
Setsubun:
It is celebration of the first days of spring, which begins in Japan on February 3 or 4. the most popular tradition connected with that festival is scattering beans about the home. The aim of it is to prevent evil spirits from entering homes.
The Doll Festival
In Japanese this festival called Hina Matsuri. It takes place on March 3. The tradition of that day is to prepare a display of dolls which represent the ancient imperial court. White sake is a traditional drink of the doll Festival.
Children's Day:
It takes place on May 5. The fifth day of the fifth month has been Japanese national holiday since 1948. Despite its name, Children's Day, the festival concerns only boys who prepare set of samurai dolls and decorate their homes with streamers that depict a carp which symbolises strength. Traditional Children's day food is rice cake.
Tanabata Festival:
The festival takes palce on July 7. It is connected with a Chinese legend about two stars: the Cowherd Star (Altair) and the Weaver Star (Vega), which meets every year in the Milky Way on that day. The tradition of Tanabata Festival is to decorate branches of bamboo with strips of paper on which people have written their wishes.
Bon Festival:
It takes place on August 15. That day is believed to be a day when the souls of dead people visit their homes. To guide the souls to their homes, people light lanterns and visits graves of their relatives and friends, to pay them respect.
The official language in Japan is Japanese which, throughout the centuries, have incorporated many foreign elements. A lot of vocabulary have been derived or borrowed from Chinese. Japanese writing system uses kanji (Chinese characters) and two sets of kana (based on simplified forms of Chinese characters), as well as the Roman alphabet and Hindu-Arabic numerals. About 99% of Japanese population speaks Japanese as their first language. However, there are many dialects among which there are the Ryukyuan languages or Ainu. Japanese seems to be extremely difficult to learn due to its complex writing system. However, in contrast to European languages, Japanese is very regular grammatically as it has only four irregular verbs and no articles.
Japanese original culture was Jomon which has evolved throughout the centuries. Contemporary culture of the country is a hybrid, a mixture of of Asian, European and North American influences. Japanese literature was the first in the world to produce a novel which was an eleven-century book "The Tale of Genji" by Lady Murasaki. Among the most famous traditional Japanese arts there are: crafts (origami, ikebana, pottery, ukiyo-e, dolls, lacquerware), traditions (games, onsen, sento, tea ceremony, budo, architecture, gardens, swords), performances (bunraku, dance, kabuki, noh, rakugo) and cuisine (donburi, mochi, ramen, sushi, tempura, udon).
Japanese popular culture is nowadays exported to the countries of the East Asia, where it gained widespread popularity. Many aspects of Japanese culture, especially manga (graphic novels), anime (animated films) or video games have become very popular in the United States and in Europe.
The history of Japanese film goes back to the nineteenth century; in 1899 the first Japanese film was produced. It was "Geisha No Teodori", a short documentary. Tokuko Nagai Takagi, a dancer and actress, was the first Japanese performer who appeared professionally in films (in 1911 and 1914).
At the beginning of Japanese film industry, films shown in the cinemas were accompanied by dramatic readings by narrators called benshi. The most famous Japanese director from the era of silent films is Kenji Mizoguchi, whose works, e.g., The Life of Oharu, are today still considered masterpieces. In 1943, Akiro Kurosawa, worldwide known Japanese film director, produced his first work which was "Sugata Sanshiro". His film "Rashōmon" won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1950 and popularize Japanese cinema both in America and in Europe. Another highly successful and still popular nowadays works of Kurosawa include 'Ikiru" and his epic "The Seven Samurai" about a band of hired samurai who protect a helpless village from a rapacious gang of thieves. In 1954 Ishirō Honda produced his famous anti-nuclear horror "Gojira" (translated in the West as "Godzilla"), which became an icon of the Japanese cinema for many years and initiated the era of Kaiju films. Next year, Part I of Hiroshi Inagaki's "Samurai Trilogy" won Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 1963 Osamu Tezuka produced "Astro Boy" which introduced anime to television. The most important Japanese filmmakers of the 1960s were Nagisa Oshima, Kaneto Shindo, and Shohei Imamura. In the next decade, Nagisa Oshima produced "Ai no koriida", a film that contained hardcore pornographic material and therefore has never been shown in Japan. In the 1980s, the popularit of anime became widespread. Hayo Miyazaki adapted his manga "Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind"ino an anime in 1984 and Katsuhiro Otomo adapts his manga Akira into a feature-length anime in 1988. In the 1990s, Shohei Imamura was awarded the Golden palm and Takeshi Kitano won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for his "Hanna-Bi". The most recent Japanese have become famous all over the world. They include "Spirited Away" by Hayao Miyazaki who won the US Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 200; "Zatoichi" and "Dolls" directed by Takeshi Kitano and the horror films Ringu and Ju-on: The Grudge whose american remakes met with commercial success.
Japanese industry comprises one-fourth of the country's GDP. Many of its branches are worldwide famous, like for example electronics, automotive, optics, chemical or robotics industries. Famous multinational companies that are based in Japan include: Toyota Motor Corporation, Sharp Corporation, Yamaha, Honda, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Mazda, Sony Corporation, Matsushita, NEC Corporation, Toshiba Corporation, Suzuki, Nintendo, Epson, JVC, Bridgestone, Casio, Citizen, Fujitsu, Isuzu, Kawasaki, Komatsu, Olympus Corporation, Sanyo, Roland Corporation, Seiko and Hitachi. Japan also has an important position in the market of high-technology industries such as semiconductors, industrial chemicals, machine tools, media and aerospace. Moreover, the country excels in construction industry which provides Japan with excellent economical development and places it among economical global powers.
