Japan

**Japan** is a country located across an island archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, the East China Sea, China, Korea and Russia.

## History

### Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Century

World War I enabled Japan, on the side of the victorious Allies, to widen its influence and territorial holdings. It continued its expansionist policy by occupying Manchuria in 1931; as a result of international condemnation of this occupation, Japan resigned from the League of Nations two years later. In 1936, Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Nazi Germany, and the 1940 Tripartite Pact made it one of the Axis Powers. After the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Japan agreed to an unconditional surrender on August 15.

In 1947, Japan adopted a new constitution emphasizing liberal democratic practices. The Allied occupation ended with the Treaty of San Francisco in 1952 and Japan was granted membership in the United Nations in 1956. Japan later achieved rapid growth to become the second-largest economy in the world, until surpassed by China in 2010. This ended in the mid-1990s when Japan suffered a major recession. In the beginning of the 21st century, positive growth has signaled a gradual economic recovery. On March 11, 2011, Japan suffered the strongest earthquake in its recorded history; this triggered the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, one of the worst disasters in the history of nuclear power.

## Government and Politics

Japan is a constitutional monarchy whereby the power of the Emperor is very limited. As a ceremonial figurehead, he is defined by the constitution as "the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people." Power is held chiefly by the Prime Minister, who is the head of government, and other elected members of the Diet, while sovereignty is vested in the Japanese people. Japan's legislative organ is the National Diet, seated in Chiyoda, Tokyo. The Diet is a bicameral body, consisting of a House of Representatives with 480 seats, elected by popular vote every four years or when dissolved, and a House of Councilors of 242 seats, whose popularly elected members serve six-year terms.

### Foreign Relations

Japan is a member of the G-7, APEC and the G-30 economic forums. The United States remains Japan's biggest foreign ally. China is Japan's largest trading partner despite often strained relations. Japan singed a security pact with Australia, with whom they keep strong bilateral trade ties with, and India. Japan is engaged in several territorial disputes with its neighbors: with Russia over the South Kuril Islands, with Korea over the Liancourt Rocks, with China over the Senkaku Islands and over the EEZ around Okinotorishima.

## Military

The Japanese Self Defense Forces are the official military of Japan. Although Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution restricts the role of the country's military to self defense, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reinterpreted this clause to allow for "collective self defense" in the 2010s. This would most likely mean that the JSDF would be able to operate in coordination with the United States, Japan's chief foreign ally, outside Japanese territory.

Despite the using name "self defense force," Japan has a formidable military by any standards that included over two dozen guided missile destroyers and four helicopter carriers by the 2020s. The JSDF was also a part of the Joint Strike Fighter program. The JSDF expanded its drone fleet in the 2010s and 2020s as the world's major militarized moved towards automation.

After Japan built the first humanoid robot in 2025, the JSDF began a program to develop android soldiers. The JSDF also began adopting railguns and laser weapons during this period.

## Economy

Japan has a robust, high tech manufacturing based economy. Although Japanese growth stagnated in the 1990s and remained flat through the 2010s, Japan had already found a niche as a manufacturer of high quality electronics, automobiles and machinery.

Japanese zaibatsu Mitsubishi developed and built the Chuo Shinkansen maglev system between Tokyo and Kobe in the 2020s and 2030s, reducing the trip between the Japanese capital and Osaka to under an hour non-stop. This involved the momentous engineering feat of digging tunnels through the Japanese Alps for trains traveling at speeds of 400+ mph. Mitsubishi had ambitious plans to export its maglev technology to other nations during the same period, competing with China Railways and German multinational Siemens for high speed rail contracts.

Although Japan temporarily decommissioned many of its nuclear power stations after the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster in 2011, Japan was a leader in green energy. Along with France, Japan already generated most of its electricity from hydro and nuclear power by 2000, avoiding the practice of coal burning responsible for air pollution in other industrialized nations. These practices along with highly developed mass transit served as a practical large scale model sustainable development. However, by decommissioning many nuclear power stations, Japan needed to burn more fossil fuels forcing Tokyo to reconsider its energy strategy.

In the 2020s, Tokyo took an interest in fourth generation nuclear power designs that had no possibility of melt down. Japan designed many small safe small modular nuclear reactors to reduce reliance on imported oil and LNG shipments to generate electricity successfully upgrading its nuclear generating capacity. Japan also expanded solar, tidal, wind and hydro generating capabilities, taking advantage of technological advances that greatly reduced the cost of many renewables and vastly increased their efficiency in the 2020s.

In the 2020s and 2030s, Japanese automobile manufacturers began moving towards hydrogen powered vehicles alongside their German, Chinese, American, Korean and Indian counterparts as part of a gradual transition towards a post-fossil fuel economy by the world's leading industrial nations. Most new Japanese vehicles had an autonomous driving option by 2030. **Japan** constricted hydrogen fueling stations and supporting infrastructure as part of the Hydrogen Economy to support hydrogen fuel cell powered cars, buses and trucks.

### Space Program

JAXA is the official space agency of Japan. JAXA initiated the largest ever space debree clean up operation in history in 2019 to make Earth orbit safe for the growing number of communication satellites in orbit. The ESA and the CNSA announced plans for similar space clean up operations either independently or in collaboration with JAXA. JAXA had the technology to develop an independent space launch capability for Japan but typically collaborated with Russia or the United States in international manned space missions.