Overview

A country slightly larger than the United Kingdom (about the size of California), Japan lies off the eastern coast of the Asian continent. An archipelago, Japan consists of four main islands—Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū, and Shikoku—as well as 3,900 smaller islands. Japan has a total land area of 145,825 square miles (377,688 square kilometers). Much of Japan is extremely mountainous and almost the entire population lives on only one-sixth of the total land area. Of all the world's major nations, the Japanese have the highest population density per square mile of habitable land. Japan has virtually no natural resources except those found in the sea. To Japan's north, the nearest foreign soil is the Russian-controlled island of Sakhalin while the People's Republic of China and South Korea lie to the west of Japan.

The word, "Japan," is actually a Portuguese misunderstanding of the Chinese pronunciation of...