Japan had 123.05 million people on October 1, 2025, according to the national census. About 30 percent of Japan's people, 37.0 million, live in the Tokyo area, which is Tokyo plus Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba prefectures. So most Japanese people live elsewhere. As of October 2025, the population of Tokyo Metropolis was estimated at 14.273 million. Japan has about 338 people per square kilometer, measured in 2020. That makes it one of the most crowded countries among those with 10 million or more people.
Daily life runs on small conveniences. At the end of 2017 Japan had 4,271,400 vending machines. As of November 2026, the country had 56,054 convenience stores at the end of 2025, up by more than 300 during the year. Tokyo police received a record 4.49 billion yen, about US$30.54 million, in lost cash in 2024. Japanese randoseru school backpacks cost about 60,000 yen on average.
Homes have their own rules. People take off their outdoor shoes at the genkan, the entryway, before stepping up into the home, and put on slippers. A tatami mat is about 91 by 182 centimeters, twice as long as it is wide. In 1963 only 59.1 percent of Japanese homes had their own bath. As of the end of March 2017, Japan had 3,900 public bathhouses (sento), the first time the number fell below 4,000.
The Tokugawa family ruled Japan from 1603 until 1868. Ieyasu Tokugawa had the emperor appoint him shogun, and the Tokugawa put in place a whole series of measures to control the daimyo, the regional lords. For two centuries Japan limited trade access to Dutch and Chinese ships with special charters. In July 1853, American Commodore Matthew Perry brought his ships into Edo Bay. The Treaty of Kanagawa, signed in March 1854, protected American sailors and opened two Japanese ports for refueling and resupply.
The Meiji period ran from 1868 to 1912. The old Tokugawa class system of samurai, farmers, artisans and merchants was abolished by 1871. Japan's first railway began operating on October 14, 1872, and Emperor Meiji attended the opening ceremony at Shinbashi Station in Tokyo. The Tokaido Shinkansen bullet train began running in 1964. Tokaido Shinkansen trains averaged a delay of 1.6 minutes per train in fiscal 2023, including delays from natural disasters. It was just 24 seconds in fiscal 2016.
Japanese is written with three kinds of characters: kanji, hiragana and katakana. Words that Japanese borrowed from other languages are usually written in katakana, and most modern loanwords come from English. The Tale of Genji has 54 chapters and is possibly the first novel in world literature. A diary entry shows that Murasaki Shikibu was writing it in 1008.
Nintendo began as a maker of Japanese playing cards called hanafuda in Kyoto, long before it made video games. As of November 2026, Super Mario Bros. sold 40.2 million copies on the NES after its 1985 release. Tamagotchi, egg-shaped virtual pets with a small screen and three buttons, went on sale in 1996 and had shipped 100 million units worldwide by the end of July 2025.
Japan's Hayabusa2 space probe brought back pieces of the asteroid Ryugu to Earth, and it returned 5.4 grams of sample, 54 times its goal of 0.1 grams.
Cherry blossoms are measured very closely. Kyoto's cherry-blossom records go back more than 1,200 years, the longest known data set of its kind. Scientists can use the old flowering dates because they come from documents and diaries from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries. The Japan Meteorological Agency says its own predictions have a margin of error of two to three days each way. Yoshino cherry trees, the famous pinkish-white ones, are clones: every Yoshino propagated since the original tree is identical to it. That is why so many bloom at the same time. 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.
Earthquake warnings in Japan are not predictions. Earthquake Early Warnings are issued slightly after a quake begins. They do not tell people an earthquake will happen in advance. 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 time. As of November 2026, the Japan Meteorological Agency has about 600 seismic intensity meters around the country and collects data from another 3,600 stations. Its shaking scale has 10 degrees and describes how strong the ground motion is at one place. Each 1-degree increase in earthquake magnitude means about 32 times more energy released.
Japanese people live long lives. Japanese women ranked first in the world for life expectancy for the 41st year in a row, as of the 2025 figures. In 2024 their average life expectancy was 87.13 years and men's was 81.09 years. The share of the population aged 65 or older reached a record 29.4 percent in 2025, as of September 2025. As of September 1, 2025, Japan had 99,763 people aged 100 or older, and about 88 percent of them were women.
Words to know
- tatami: woven floor mat
- daimyo: regional lords
- clones: exact copies
- katakana: Japanese letters
- sento: public bathhouse
