Japan is a country made of islands. It has four main islands: Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. As of November 2026, a 2023 count puts the total at about 14,125 islands, more than double the earlier count of 6,852. Japan, at 377,975 square kilometers, is a little larger than Germany, which is 357,596. Japan is about 6 percent bigger.

Two long rainy seasons come each year. One arrives in early summer when the southeast monsoon begins, and one in autumn when the winds cease. From summer to autumn, typhoons form over the Pacific Ocean to the south and hit Japan. In winter, cold air from Siberia flows over the warm Sea of Japan. Heavy snow then falls on the Sea of Japan side of Honshu.

Japan has a lot of earthquakes: more than a thousand shake it every year. The cause lies under the sea. Around Japan, oceanic plates slide beneath continental plates several centimeters a year. When an oceanic plate sinks, it drags the continental plate down and strain builds up. When the strain gets too big, the continental plate jumps up. Each 1-degree increase in magnitude means about 32 times more energy released by the earthquake.

An earthquake sends out waves at two speeds. Fast P-waves travel at about 7 km/s, and slower, more damaging S-waves travel at about 4 km/s. At a point 50 km from an earthquake's start, a P-wave arrives after about 7 seconds and the stronger S-wave after about 13 seconds. So places farther away get more warning time. A tsunami starts when a big undersea earthquake makes the sea floor rise or sink. Tsunami waves slow down as the sea gets shallower, so the trailing waves catch up with those ahead near the coast and the tsunami grows much higher.

The Tokugawa family ruled Japan from 1603 until 1868, a time called the Edo period. Tokyo was first called Edo, and it began to flourish after Tokugawa Ieyasu set up the Tokugawa Shogunate there in 1603. In July 1853, American Commodore Matthew Perry brought his ships into Edo Bay, which is now called Tokyo Bay. Japan and the United States signed the Treaty of Kanagawa in March 1854. It protected American sailors and opened two Japanese ports for refueling and resupply.

The Meiji period ran from 1868 to 1912. During it, Japan's capital moved from Kyoto, where it had been since 794, to Tokyo, meaning Eastern Capital. Japan's first railway began operating on October 14, 1872, and Emperor Meiji attended the opening ceremony at Shinbashi Station in Tokyo.

The Japanese school year begins in April and ends in March, because the Meiji-era government adopted a fiscal year running from April to March. At lunch, students take turns serving the food to their classmates in the classroom.

Japanese is written with three kinds of characters: kanji, hiragana and katakana. Hiragana and katakana are two sets of syllable letters with 46 characters each, and each hiragana has a matching katakana.

The TV show Astro Boy, first shown on Fuji Television on January 1, 1963, was the first Japanese TV anime made as a long series. Studio Ghibli was co-founded in 1985 by the filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. As of November 2026, Japanese sales of manga in print and e-book form reached a record 704.3 billion yen in 2024. Emoji started as 176 characters, each 12 by 12 pixels, made by a Docomo employee for i-mode phones. Docomo could not copyright them, so rival phone companies offered emoji too.

Sushi does not simply mean raw fish. The word joins the words for vinegar and rice. Sushi is vinegared rice paired with a garnish of seafood, egg or vegetables, raw or cooked. As of November 2026, people ate about 21.4 kilograms of seafood a year each in 2023, down from a peak of 40.2 kilograms in 2001. Rice eaten per person fell from 118.3 kilograms a year in 1962 to 54.4 kilograms in 2016, less than half.

Wild places survive on these crowded islands. Japanese macaques, the snow monkeys, live farther north than any other primates in the world. In eastern Hokkaido, Kushiro-shitsugen is the largest marshland in Japan, covering 18,000 hectares. Red-crowned cranes were thought extinct around 1890 until a small group was found at Kushiro marsh. After locals began feeding them in 1952, the population recovered gradually. The key threat to the cranes is the loss and degradation of wetlands in their breeding and wintering grounds.

In spring, Japan follows the cherry blossom front. It starts in the south in late March and moves northward as the season goes on. The blooming date is the first day five or six blossoms open on a sample tree. Full bloom is the first day more than 80% have opened. The Japan Meteorological Agency says its predictions have a margin of error of two to three days each way. Kyoto's cherry-blossom records go back more than 1,200 years, the longest known data set of its kind, kept in diaries and chronicles.

Words to know

• monsoon: seasonal rain wind
• typhoons: big storms
• tsunami: giant sea wave
• magnitude: quake size
• marshland: wet ground