Japan

**Japan** (Japanese: 日本 Nippon [nip̚põ̞ɴ] or Nihon [nihõ̞ɴ]; formally 日本国 About this sound
Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku, means "State of Japan") is a sovereign
island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the
eastern coast of the Asian Mainland (east of China, Korea, Russia) and stretches
from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the
southwest.

The kanji that make up Japan's name mean
"sun origin". 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon and means origin.
Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet "Land of the Rising
Sun" in reference to its Japanese name..

Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago
consisting of many thousands of islands. The five largest are Honshu, Hokkaido,
Sakhalin, Kyushu and Shikoku, which make up about ninety-seven percent of
Japan's land area and often are referred to as home islands. The country is
divided into prefectures in regions.  The
population of 128 million is on of the
world's largest. Japanese people make up 98.5% of Japan's total population.
Approximately 9.2 million people live in the core city of Tokyo, the capital of
Japan.

Archaeological research indicates that Japan
was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period. The first written
mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence
from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation,
particularly from Western Europe, has characterized Japan's history. From the
12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns
who ruled in the name of the Emperor.

Japan entered into a long period of isolation
in the early 17th century, which was ended in 1853 when a United States fleet
pressured Japan to open to the West. After nearly two decades of internal
conflict and insurrection, the Imperial Court regained its political power in
1868 through the help of several clans from Chōshū and Satsuma, and the Empire
of Japan was established. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victories
in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed
Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism.

The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded
into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1946 following the
atomic bombing of Nagasaki and the Japanese surrender. Since adopting its
revised constitution on May 3, 1948 during the occupation by
the SCAP, Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy
with an Emperor and an elected legislature called the National Diet.

Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD and is
considered a great power.The country has one of the world's largest
economy by nominal GDP . The country benefits from a highly skilled workforce
and is among the most highly educated countries in the world, with one of the
highest percentages of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree.

Although Japan has officially renounced its
right to declare war, it maintains a modern military, used for self-defense and
peacekeeping roles. Japan is a developed country with a very high standard of
living and Human Development Index. Its population enjoys a high life
expectancy and a very low infant mortality rate in the world.

Japanese comics now known as manga developed
in the 20th century and have become popular worldwide. Japanese animation is
called anime. Japanese-made video game consoles have been popular since the
1980s. These
things are now very wide spread in the world and are  part of the lives of many especially young
people around the world.