Japan is an island country on the eastern edge of Asia. As of November 2026, Japan is made up of about 14,125 islands. That is from a 2023 count. It was more than double the old count of 6,852. Japan has four main islands: Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. About three-quarters of its land is mountains or hills. Mount Fuji is the tallest mountain in Japan. Fuji is a cone-shaped volcano. It is an active volcano.

The Tokugawa family ruled Japan from 1603 until 1868. That time is called the Edo period. In July 1853 an American fleet sailed into Edo Bay. Today it is Tokyo Bay. In the Meiji period, the capital moved from Kyoto to Edo. Edo got a new name, Tokyo. It means Eastern Capital. Tokyo is the capital of Japan. About 30 percent of Japan's people live in the Tokyo area, as of November 2026. Most people live elsewhere.

Japanese is written with three kinds of characters: kanji, hiragana and katakana. Two are sets of syllable letters. Each has 46 characters. Katakana is used for words from other languages. Most come from English. Emoji began on Japanese phones in the late 1990s. A haiku is a short poem of three lines. It counts 5, 7 and 5 sounds. The Tale of Genji is a famous old Japanese story. It has 54 chapters.

From summer to autumn, typhoons form over the Pacific Ocean. They hit Japan. Red-crowned cranes live in eastern Hokkaido all year round. The red-crowned crane has a wingspan of about 2.5 meters. In winter, cold air from Siberia flows over the warm Sea of Japan. Heavy snow falls on the Sea of Japan side of Honshu. The Sapporo Snow Festival began in the winter of 1950. As of November 2026, more than two million people visit each year.

Words to know

• emoji: tiny picture
• katakana: borrowed-word letters
• Meiji: a time period
• haiku: short poem
• Edo: old Tokyo