Departments
Intermediate Japanese - Free Online Course
NIHON
日本
Japan
Japan has been likened to “a shrimp lying off the coast of China.” The 1,200-mile archipelago consists of about 4,000 islands, although only a tiny fraction of these are large enough to support human activity.
The Home Islands
There are four major islands which are regarded as Japan’s “home islands.” The northernmost of these, Hokkaido, lies at about the same latitude as the Great Lakes region of the United States. Hokkaido has a small population, and has traditionally been viewed as Japan’s “frontier region.” South of Hokkaido is the main Japanese island, Honshu. Honshu is home to the largest of Japan’s cities, as well as the country’s richest agricultural land. Below Honshu are Kyushu—a sub-tropical island on about the same latitude as the U.S. state of Alabama—and Shikoku.
Japan is poor in natural resources. There are few coal or iron deposits. Only about 18% of the land is suitable for agriculture. The arable land is distributed in three agricultural plains. The Kanto plain around Tokyo is the largest of these, with a total area of 5,000 square miles. The two smaller plains—the Nobi Plain, near Nagoya, and the Kansai Plain, near Kyoto—each consist of about 500 square miles. The Japanese have reclaimed additional lands for farming by creating terrace fields on hillsides. Since time immemorial, food has been an expensive commodity in Japan. The national diet has always been supplemented by seafood: fish, shellfish, seaweed, jellyfish, and whale meat
Japan is geologically unstable, and there are frequent earthquakes. In addition, Japan has two volcanoes: Mt. Fuji, located on the border between the Shizuoka and Yamanashi prefectures, and Mt. Asama, which overlooks the resort town of Karuizawa (about 140 km northwest of Tokyo). Mt. Fuji has not erupted since 1707, but Mt. Asama still spews steam and ash on occasion. It last erupted in 2004.
