Japan is an island country in East Asia. It is located in the northwest Pacific Ocean, as well as is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while expanding from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north towards the East China Sea and also Taiwan in the south. Japan belongs of the Ring of Fire, and also extends an archipelago of 6852 islands covering 377,975 square kilometers (145,937 sq mi); the 5 primary islands are Hokkaido, Honshu (the “mainland”), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Tokyo is the country’s capital and also largest city; various other significant cities include Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, as well as Kyoto.

Japan is the eleventh most populous nation on the planet, in addition to among one of the most densely booming and also urbanized. Regarding three-fourths of the country’s terrain is mountainous, concentrating its population of 125.5 million on narrow coastal plains. Japan is divided right into 47 management prefectures and also 8 standard regions. The Greater Tokyo Location is the most populous city worldwide, with greater than 37.4 million locals.

Japan has actually been populated since the Upper Paleolithic period (30,000 BC), though the first created reference of the archipelago shows up in a Chinese chronicle (guide of Han) ended up in the second century AD. Between the 4th and also 9th centuries, the kingdoms of Japan became linked under an emperor and also the imperial court based in Heian-kyō.

Starting in the 12th century, political power was held by a collection of military totalitarians (shōgun) and also feudal lords (daimyō) as well as imposed by a class of warrior nobility (samurai). After a century-long period of civil war, the nation was reunified in 1603 under the Tokugawa shogunate, which passed an isolationist diplomacy. In 1854, an USA fleet forced Japan to open trade to the West, which led to the end of the shogunate and the remediation of royal power in 1868. In the Meiji duration, the Empire of Japan adopted a Western-modeled constitution and pursued a program of automation and also innovation.

In the middle of a rise in militarism and abroad colonization, Japan attacked China in 1937 and also got in World War II as an Axis power in 1941. After suffering defeat in the Pacific War as well as 2 atomic battles, Japan surrendered in 1945 as well as came under a seven-year Allied occupation, during which it embraced a new constitution. Under the 1947 constitution, Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary absolute monarchy with a bicameral legislature, the National Diet regimen.