Japan Statistics - Page 1

Mount Fuji, Japan

Japan is one of the world's leading industrial and trading nations and the first Asian nation to develop a technologically advanced industrial economy. It is a small country compared with such nations as the United States but is significantly larger than the United Kingdom, Germany, and all other major European nations except Sweden, France, and Spain.

Before World War II, Japan was the center of an empire that at times included Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria, much of eastern China, southern Sakhalin island, and the Marshall and Mariana islands of the southwest Pacific. Today, following concessions of territory at the end of the war, Japan, greatly reduced in size, consists of four main islands--Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu--and hundreds of lesser islands that stretch in a series of arcs for nearly 3,000 km (1,875 mi.) along the eastern edge of the Asian mainland.

Japan's closest neighbor is Russia; Sakhalin island, a Russian possession, reaches to within 50 km (31 mi.) of Hokkaido across the narrow Soya (La Perouse) Strait. The nearest mainland neighbor is South Korea, which lies about 200 km (124 mi.) west of Japan across the Korea Strait. To the southwest is Taiwan; and to the north, the Russian mainland.

The name Japan is the romanized version of the Japanese name Nihon or Nippon, which means "land of the rising sun." The islands were known to European traders during the 15th century, but during the TOKUGAWA period (1603-1867), an era of isolation, Japan developed a highly original and distinctive culture. The country reopened contact and trade with the outside world under the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912). Although Japan possessed few industrial raw materials, it developed into one of the world's leading industrialized nations. Japan waged war against the Allies during World War II but surrendered after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The country achieved a rapid recovery and Japan became the world's second leading economic power, after the United States.