page_title: Japan
section_title: Energy
hierarchical_section_title: Japan / Infrastructure / Energy
caption_attribution_description: Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station, ABWR. (Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, Japan) Photo Credit: Tokyo Electric Power Co., TEPCO
context_page_description: Japan is an island country of East Asia in the northwest Pacific Ocean. It borders the Sea of Japan to the west and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. Japan is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire and comprises an archipelago of 6,852 islands covering 377,975 square kilometers; its five main islands, from north to south, are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Tokyo is the country's capital and largest city; other major cities include Osaka and Nagoya.
  Japan is the 11th most populous country in the world, as well as one of the most densely populated and urbanized. About three-fourths of the country's terrain is mountainous, concentrating its population of 126.2 million on narrow coastal plains. Japan is administratively divided into 47 prefectures and traditionally divided into eight regions. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world, with more than 37.4 million residents.
  The islands of Japan were inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, though the first mentions of the archipelago appear in Chinese chronicles from the 1st century AD.
context_section_description: As of 2017, 39% of energy in Japan was produced from petroleum, 25% from coal, 23% from natural gas, 3.5% from hydropower and 1.5% from nuclear power. Nuclear power was down from 11.2 percent in 2010. By May 2012 all of the country's nuclear power plants had been taken offline because of ongoing public opposition following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011, though government officials continued to try to sway public opinion in favor of returning at least some to service. The Sendai Nuclear Power Plant restarted in 2015, and since then several other nuclear power plants have been restarted. Japan lacks significant domestic reserves and so has a heavy dependence on imported energy. Japan has therefore aimed to diversify its sources and maintain high levels of energy efficiency.
caption: The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant, a nuclear plant with seven units, is the largest single nuclear power station in the world.
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