Japan National name: Nippon Emperor: Akihito (1989) Prime Minister: Yoshiro Mori (2000) Area: 145,874 sq. mi. (377,835 sq. km)

Population (2000 est.): 126,549,976 (average annual rate of natural increase: 0.2%); birth rate: 10/1000; infant mortality rate: 3.9/1000; density per sq. mi.: 868

Capital and largest city (2000 est.): Tokyo, 34,750,000 (metro. area)

Other large cities: Osaka (2000 est.), 17,800,000 (metro. area); Yokohama, 3,307,136 (part of Tokyo metro. area); Nagoya (2000 est.), 5,100,000 (metro. area); Sapporo, 1,719,000; Kobe, 1,501,000 (part of Osaka metro. area); Kyoto, 1,456,000 (part of Osaka metro. area); Fukuoka, 1,263,000; Kawasaki, 1,196,000 (part of Tokyo metro. area); Hiroshima, 1,099,000

Monetary unit: Yen

Language: Japanese

Ethnicity/race: Japanese 99.4%, other 0.6% (mostly Korean)

Religions: Shintoist, 111.8 million; Buddhist, 93.1 million; Christian, 1.4 million; other, 11.4 million

Literacy rate: 99% (1970)

Economic summary: GDP/PPP (1998 est.): $2.903 trillion; $23,100 per capita. Real growth rate: –2.6%. Inflation: 0.9%. Unemployment: 4.4% (Nov. 1998). Arable land: 11%. Agriculture: rice, sugar beets, vegetables, fruit, pork, poultry, dairy products, eggs, fish. Labor force: 67.72 million (Nov. 1998): trade and services, 50%; manufacturing, mining, and construction, 33%; utilities and communication, 7%; agriculture, forestry, and fishing, 6%; government, 3% (1994). Industries: among world's largest and technologically advanced producers of steel and nonferrous metallurgy, heavy electrical equipment, construction and mining equipment, motor vehicles and parts, electronic and telecommunication equipment, machine tools, automated production systems, locomotives and railroad rolling stock, ships, chemicals, textiles, processed food. Exports: $440 billion (f.o.b., 1998): manufactures (including machinery, motor vehicles, consumer electronics). Imports: $319 billion (c.i.f., 1998): manufactures, foodstuffs and raw materials, fossil fuel. Major trading partners: U.S., EU, Southeast Asia, China.

Communications: Telephones: main lines in use: 60.3 million (1997); mobile cellular: 36.5 million (1998). Radio broadcast stations: AM 190, FM 88, shortwave 24 (1999). Radios: 120.5 million (1997). Television broadcast stations: 7,108 (plus 441 repeaters; note - in addition, US Forces are served by 3 TV stations and 2 TV cable services) (1999). Televisions: 86.5 million (1997). Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 357 (1999).

Transportation: Railways: total: 23,670.7 km (1994). Highways: total: 1,152,207 km; paved: 863,003 km (including 6,114 km of expressways) unpaved: 289,204 km (1997 est.). Waterways: about 1,770 km; seagoing craft ply all coastal inland seas. Ports and harbors: Akita, Amagasaki, Chiba, Hachinohe, Hakodate, Higashi-Harima, Himeji, Hiroshima, Kawasaki, Kinuura, Kobe, Kushiro, Mizushima, Moji, Nagoya, Osaka, Sakai, Sakaide, Shimizu, Tokyo, Tomakomai. Airports: 171 (1999 est.).

International disputes: islands of Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and the Habomai group occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945, now administered by Russia, claimed by Japan; Liancourt Rocks (Takeshima/Tokdo) disputed with South Korea; Senkaku-shoto (Senkaku Islands) claimed by China and Taiwan.

An archipelago extending in an arc more than 1,744 miles (2,790 km) from northeast to southwest in the Pacific, Japan is separated from the east coast of Asia by the Sea of Japan. It is approximately the size of Montana.

Japan's four main islands are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku. The Ryukyu chain to the southwest was U.S.-occupied from 1945 to 1972, when it reverted to Japanese control, and the Kurils to the northeast are Russian-occupied. The surface of the main islands consists largely of mountains separated by narrow valleys.

Located within a geologically active region, Japan sustains approximately 1,000 earthquakes per year, though most are minor. Offshore earthquakes can produce tsunamis, massive ocean waves that can wreak destruction along the Pacific shore. Several of Japan's mountains are active volcanoes.

Constitutional monarchy.

Legend attributes creation of Japan to the sun goddess, from whom the emperors were descended. The first of them was Jimmu, supposed to have ascended the throne in 660 B.C., a tradition that constituted official doctrine until 1945.

Recorded Japanese history begins in approximately A.D. 400, when the Yamato clan, eventually based in Kyoto, managed to exact a loose control of the other family groups of central and western Japan. Contact with Korea introduced Buddhism to Japan at about this time. Through the 700s Japan was much influenced by China, and the Yamato clan set up an imperial court similar to that of China. In the ensuing centuries, the authority of the imperial court was undermined as powerful gentry families vied for control.

At the same time, warrior clans were rising to prominence as a distinct class known as samurai. In 1192 the Minamoto clan set up a military government under their leader, Yoritomo. He was designated shogun (military dictator). For the following 700 years, shoguns from a succession of clans ruled in Japan, while the imperial court existed in relative obscurity.

First contact with the West came in about 1542, when a Portuguese ship off course arrived in Japanese waters. Portuguese traders, Jesuit missionaries, and Spanish, Dutch, and English traders followed. Suspicious of Christianity and of Portuguese support of a local Japanese revolt, the shoguns of the Tokugawa period (1603–1867) prohibited all trade with foreign countries; only a Dutch trading post at Nagasaki was permitted. Western attempts to renew trading relations failed until 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry sailed an American fleet into Tokyo Bay. Trade with the West was forced upon Japan under terms less than favorable to the Japanese. Strife caused by these actions brought down the feudal world of the shoguns. In 1868 the emperor Meiji came to the throne, and the shogun system was abolished.

Japan quickly made the transition from a medieval to a modern power. An imperial army was established with conscription, and parliamentary government was formed in 1889. The Japanese began to take steps to extend their empire. After a brief war with China in 1894–95, Japan acquired Formosa (Taiwan), the Pescadores Islands, and part of southern Manchuria. China also recognized the independence of Korea (Chosen), which Japan later annexed (1910).

In 1904–05, Japan defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War, gaining the territory of southern Sakhalin (Karafuto) and Russia's port and rail rights in Manchuria. In World War I Japan seized Germany's Pacific islands and leased areas in China. The Treaty of Versailles then awarded it a mandate over the islands.

At the Washington Conference of 1921–22, Japan agreed to respect Chinese national integrity, but in 1931 invaded Manchuria. The following year, Japan set up this area as a puppet state, “Manchukuo,” under Emperor Henry Pu-Yi, the last of China's Manchu Dynasty. On Nov. 25, 1936, Japan joined the Axis. The invasion of China came the next year followed by the Pearl Harbor attack on the U.S. on Dec. 7, 1941. Japan won its first military engagements during the war, extending its power over a vast area of the Pacific. Yet after 1942 the Japanese were forced to retreat, island by island, to their own country. The dropping of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 by the United States finally brought the government to admit defeat. Japan surrendered formally on Sept. 2, 1945, aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands reverted to the U.S.S.R., and Formosa (Taiwan) and Manchuria to China. The Pacific islands remained under U.S. occupation.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur was appointed supreme commander of the U.S. occupation of postwar Japan (1945–52). In 1947 a new constitution took effect. The emperor became largely a symbolic head of state. The U.S. and Japan signed a security treaty in 1951, allowing for U.S. troops to be stationed in Japan. In 1952 Japan regained full sovereignty, and in 1972 the U.S. returned to Japan the Ryuku Islands, including Okinawa.

Japan's postwar economic recovery was nothing short of remarkable. New technologies and manufacturing were undertaken with great success. A shrewd trade policy gave Japan larger shares in many Western markets, an imbalance that caused some tensions with the U.S. The close involvement of Japanese government in the country's banking and industry produced accusations of protectionism. Yet economic growth continued through the 1970s and 1980s, eventually making Japan the world's second-largest economy (after the U.S.).

Japan has also been criticized for hesitation to take an active role in world affairs. Its failure to join the international coalition in the Persian Gulf War in 1991 was a case in point. Japanese prime minister Toshiki Kaifu pledged to provide $9 billion to the U.S. to help defray the expense of the latter's operations in the Persian Gulf. The government attempted to push legislation that would have permitted Japan to send a military contingent to the Gulf in noncombat roles. This was defeated amid public outcry against it.

During the 1990s, Japan has suffered an economic downturn marked by scandals involving government officials, bankers, and leaders of industry. Banks have closed under the weight of bad loans, unemployment has risen, real estate values have dropped, and many businesses have failed. Japan, the world's second-largest economy behind the United States, succumbed to the Asian economic crisis in 1998, experiencing its worst recession since World War II. These setbacks led to the resignation of Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto in July 1998. He was replaced by Keizo Obuchi. In 1999 Japan seemed to make slight progress in an economic recovery. The International Monetary Fund reported in Sept. 1999 that “several signals point to a limited recovery of the Japanese economy.”

Prime Minister Obuchi died of a stroke in May 2000 and was succeeded by Yoshiro Mori, whose administration was dogged by scandal and blunders from the get-go. In June elections, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party nearly lost control of parliament and two of Mori's ministers were unseated. Then two financial scandals involving top administration officials broke within a week of each other, further imperilling Mori's government.