•
Population:
127,435,000
• Land Area: 372,300 Sq.km (similar to California)
• Language: Japanese
• Religions: Buddhist/Shinto: 70%
New Religions: 25%
Non-religious: 4%
Christian: <1%
• Monetary Unit: Yen (¥)
• Head of State: Emperor Akihito
• Government: Constitutional Monarchy with parliamentary democracy
• Churches: 7,765 Protestant churches
• Missions: 2,362 missionaries / 1 missionary per 53,285 people
• Land Area: 372,300 Sq.km (similar to California)
• Language: Japanese
• Religions: Buddhist/Shinto: 70%
New Religions: 25%
Non-religious: 4%
Christian: <1%
• Monetary Unit: Yen (¥)
• Head of State: Emperor Akihito
• Government: Constitutional Monarchy with parliamentary democracy
• Churches: 7,765 Protestant churches
• Missions: 2,362 missionaries / 1 missionary per 53,285 people
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Japan's
capital city, Tokyo,
has one of the largest populations of any
city on the planet. Including outlying
suburbs, this urban sprawl is home to
nearly 28 million people.
Yokohama, a well-known port city just south of Tokyo, is the country's 2nd largest city.
Metropolitan areas are dense and congested, but benefit from excellent public transportation systems.
Yokohama, a well-known port city just south of Tokyo, is the country's 2nd largest city.
Metropolitan areas are dense and congested, but benefit from excellent public transportation systems.
Japan
is an archipelago, made up of four main
islands, and many smaller ones scattered
along its coasts.
Japan stretches along the main fault lines of the Pacific ocean, and consequently is vulnerable to earthquakes. Earthquakes occur every day, though most are too weak to even be noticed. But sometimes devastating earthquakes occur, such as the one in the city of Kobe in 1995.
Japan stretches along the main fault lines of the Pacific ocean, and consequently is vulnerable to earthquakes. Earthquakes occur every day, though most are too weak to even be noticed. But sometimes devastating earthquakes occur, such as the one in the city of Kobe in 1995.
Language
The Japanese language has been considered one the most complex for Westerners to learn. It did not have a writing system at all until about the 7th century A.D. when the Japanese began to adopt the Chinese writing system. Although the Japanese have heavily modified this system over the centuries, it still retains aspects of its Chinese origins. The writing system may be of Chinese descent, but the spoken language itself is unrelated to Chinese and its origins are not fully known.
Japanese has a total of three alphabets. Two of these are phonetic and are a collection of all basic syllables in the Japanese language. Each syllable has two different writing styles, and so there are are two sets, or syllabaries: Hiragana and Katakana. This is the closest to what English calls an alphabet. Hiragana is used for writing Japanese words and Katakana is used for writing words of foreign origin.
But Japanese also uses a more complex set of characters called Kanji. These could be called pictographs or ideograms and are more distinctly Chinese in source. They are individual characters designed to represent a single idea, can have multiple pronunciations, and are much more complicated to write. By the time a Japanese person graduates from high school, they have learned around 2,000 of these characters. These are a standard set developed by the Japanese government, and are considered necessary for even reading a newspaper. There are many others, however, and the total number of Kanji characters comes to well over 6,000. But many of these are not used in everyday life, just like many words in our English dictionary are rarely used. In fact, there is an additional set of 5,800 which is considered obsolete.
History
Early
Japanese history
is
vague and poorly recorded. Reliable
records begin around A.D. 500 with the
introduction of Chinese trade, writing and
religion (Buddhism). Even early on, the
head of state was the emperor, although
administrative power was held by others,
and sometimes scattered over a separated
country. The lack of national unification
persisted for centuries, and well into the
medieval feudal years. After great
conflict, warlords called
shogun
rose
to claim administrative rights, while the
emperor's role declined in its potency.
Nevertheless, the emperial house
persisted.
In the
sixteenth century Portuguese sailors became
the first Westerners to visit Japan, bringing
Western trade and religion. Among these were
Jesuit missionaries. So many Japanese
converted to Christianity from Shintoism and
Buddhism that the ruling Shogunate felt
threatened and outlawed Christianity in
Japan. Japan also closed its doors to western
commerce and remained shut off from much of
the world for the next two centuries.
In the mid 1800s the U.S. forced its way into the Japanese port of Yokohama and re-opened Japan to the West. The shogunate lost its administrative power and relinquished it to the Imperial house, an event known as the Meiji restoration. After the mid-1800s, Japan rapidly embraced Western technology and commerce, and grew into a military world power that would affect both the Asian mainland and the United States in the first half of the twentieth century.
World
War II devasted Japan. The resilient Japanese
fighting spirit and the bombings
of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the entire
world. The post-war recovery was intense
but successful and Japan once again became
a world power, this time in commercial
trade and industry. In recent years the
economic boom of the 1970s and 80s has
declined. The population is aging and
Christianity struggles to regain the
foothold it had centuries ago.
Religion
There
are two main religions in Japan: Shinto and
Buddhism. The Shinto faith
is greatly polytheistic. In fact, because
of the great number of gods in the Shinto
religion, Japan can rightly be called the
land of a thousand gods, if not more.
According to the Shinto creation account,
the gods Izanami and Izanagi dipped the
tip of their spear into a mire, and the
drops that fell from the spear became the
islands of Japan. The Emperor has
historically been considered a direct
descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu,
although this belief has waned with the
rise of materialistic lifestyles, and
since World War II.
The
other main religion of Japan is
Buddhism.
Chinese scribes brought Buddhism to Japan
in the sixth century A.D. and it has since
held great sway over political and social
movements. It originated in India and
rapidly spread to China, Korea, and most
of Southeast Asia. Buddhism sets out to
achieve spirtual enlightenment through
peaceful living, meditation, and
self-discipline, in hopes of immitating
the enlightenment of the
Buddha.
The Japanese language has been considered one the most complex for Westerners to learn. It did not have a writing system at all until about the 7th century A.D. when the Japanese began to adopt the Chinese writing system. Although the Japanese have heavily modified this system over the centuries, it still retains aspects of its Chinese origins. The writing system may be of Chinese descent, but the spoken language itself is unrelated to Chinese and its origins are not fully known.
Japanese has a total of three alphabets. Two of these are phonetic and are a collection of all basic syllables in the Japanese language. Each syllable has two different writing styles, and so there are are two sets, or syllabaries: Hiragana and Katakana. This is the closest to what English calls an alphabet. Hiragana is used for writing Japanese words and Katakana is used for writing words of foreign origin.
But Japanese also uses a more complex set of characters called Kanji. These could be called pictographs or ideograms and are more distinctly Chinese in source. They are individual characters designed to represent a single idea, can have multiple pronunciations, and are much more complicated to write. By the time a Japanese person graduates from high school, they have learned around 2,000 of these characters. These are a standard set developed by the Japanese government, and are considered necessary for even reading a newspaper. There are many others, however, and the total number of Kanji characters comes to well over 6,000. But many of these are not used in everyday life, just like many words in our English dictionary are rarely used. In fact, there is an additional set of 5,800 which is considered obsolete.
History
In the mid 1800s the U.S. forced its way into the Japanese port of Yokohama and re-opened Japan to the West. The shogunate lost its administrative power and relinquished it to the Imperial house, an event known as the Meiji restoration. After the mid-1800s, Japan rapidly embraced Western technology and commerce, and grew into a military world power that would affect both the Asian mainland and the United States in the first half of the twentieth century.
Religion
About Japan