The Japan course
Facts about Japan, for your next trip
Ten topics, two timed rounds each, played straight down this page. Finish a round and the next one starts itself, carrying you from the Ring of Fire and the shogunate to three writing scripts, dashi, snow monkeys and the largest city on Earth.
Capital Tokyo · Asia · 10 topics · 20 rounds · 80 questions · 20 seconds each
Japan is an island country off the eastern edge of Asia, home to about 123 million people and one of the world’s largest economies. It combines an unbroken imperial line with some of the densest, most technically advanced cities anywhere, and its geography of mountains and fault lines shapes almost everything about how people live.
Japan is administered as 47 prefectures across an arc of roughly 14,000 islands, though four of them carry almost everyone. Honshu is the main island and holds both great urban corridors, Kanto around Tokyo and Kansai around Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe. Hokkaido in the north is cold, open and thinly settled by Japanese standards, Kyushu in the southwest is volcanic and closest to the Asian mainland, and Shikoku is the smallest and quietest of the four. Because mountains cover three quarters of the land, nearly all of that life is pressed onto narrow coastal plains.
Tokyo is the largest metropolitan area in the world and serves as capital, financial center and media industry at once. Osaka is the commercial counterweight and takes eating seriously enough to have a word for doing it to the point of ruin, Kyoto kept the temples and the imperial court for a thousand years, and Sapporo, Fukuoka and Hiroshima anchor their own regions. Most visitors travel the Tokyo to Kyoto corridor by shinkansen and come for some mix of temples, food, cherry blossom or deep snow, depending entirely on the month.
- Population
- 123 million
- Area
- 377,975 km²
- Currency
- Yen (¥)
- Official language
- Japanese
- Prefectures
- 47
- Highest point
- Mount Fuji, 3,776 m
Japan · Geography
Geography of Japan
An arc of roughly 14,000 islands sitting where several tectonic plates meet, three quarters of it mountain. What is left is a set of narrow coastal plains, and almost the whole country is pressed onto them.
Commonly asked
- How many islands does Japan have, and which ones matter?
- Around 14,000, though four carry nearly everyone: Honshu, the main island; Hokkaido in the cold north; Kyushu in the volcanic southwest; and Shikoku, the smallest of the four. The land is administered as 47 prefectures.
- Why does Japan have so many earthquakes?
- It sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where several tectonic plates grind against each other. A typical year brings over a thousand felt earthquakes, and the country maintains more than a hundred active volcanoes.
- What is the climate of Japan?
- It runs from subarctic in northern Hokkaido to subtropical in Okinawa, an unusually wide range for one country. Mount Fuji, at 3,776 meters, is the highest point.
Japan · History
History of Japan
A court state that borrowed Chinese writing and Buddhism, then warrior families who took the real power and kept it for seven centuries. The ports opened in 1853, and the century after that ran from rapid industrialisation to defeat and recovery.
Commonly asked
- What was a shogun?
- The military ruler who governed in the emperor’s name. Shogunates ran the country from 1192 onward, and the Tokugawa line held power from 1603 for over 250 years while the emperor remained in Kyoto as a figurehead.
- Why was Japan closed to the outside world?
- The Tokugawa shogunate restricted foreign contact for most of its rule, fearing the destabilising effect of European trade and Christian missions. American warships forced the ports open in 1853.
- What was the Meiji Restoration?
- The 1868 transfer of formal authority back to the emperor, and with it a deliberate crash programme of industrial, legal and military modernisation. It turned an agrarian country into an industrial power inside a generation.
Japan · Language
The Japanese language
A language with few clear relatives, written in three scripts at once, and with politeness built into the grammar rather than left to the choice of words.
Commonly asked
- Why does Japanese use three writing systems?
- Each does a different job. Kanji are characters borrowed from Chinese that carry meaning, hiragana handles grammar and native words, and katakana marks loanwords and emphasis. A normal sentence uses all three.
- What is keigo?
- The honorific register. Verb forms change depending on who is speaking to whom, so respect is expressed through grammar rather than through vocabulary alone. It is a large part of what makes the language hard for learners.
- Is Japanese related to Chinese or Korean?
- Not demonstrably. It shares characters and a great deal of vocabulary with Chinese through borrowing, but the grammar is unrelated. Its only clear relatives are the Ryukyuan languages of Okinawa.
Japan · Culture
Culture of Japan
Shinto and Buddhism practised side by side rather than in competition, a calendar organized around the seasons, and formal arts whose rules still shape how the country designs things.
Commonly asked
- What religion is Japan?
- Most people take part in both Shinto and Buddhist practice without treating it as a contradiction: Shinto rites for births and weddings, Buddhist temples for funerals. Few describe themselves as religious in the way a survey means it.
- What is hanami?
- Cherry blossom viewing, the spring high point of a calendar full of seasonal observance. The blossom front is tracked north up the country each year and lasts about a week in any one place.
- Why are manga and anime such a big export?
- Comics and animation are mainstream adult media in Japan, not a children’s niche, so the industry is large and the range is wide. Since the 1980s they have become the country’s most visible cultural export.
Japan · Economy
Economy of Japan
One of the largest economies in the world, built on precision manufacturing rather than raw materials, which it imports in bulk. Growth has been slow since the asset bubble burst in the early 1990s.
Commonly asked
- What does Japan export?
- Cars, industrial robots, semiconductors and semiconductor equipment, machine tools and precision components. Toyota, Sony and Keyence are among the names known well beyond Asia.
- What were the lost decades?
- The long stretch of near-zero growth after the property and stock bubble collapsed in the early 1990s. The Bank of Japan held interest rates at or below zero for years before finally raising them in 2024.
- How does an aging population affect Japan’s economy?
- The workforce shrinks each year, which caps growth and raises the cost of pensions and care. Government debt worth more than twice annual output is the other structural pressure.
Japan · Politics
Politics of Japan
A constitutional monarchy whose emperor has no political power, a parliament called the Diet, and one party that has governed for almost the entire period since 1955.
Commonly asked
- Does the Emperor of Japan have any power?
- None. Emperor Naruhito, who began the Reiwa era in 2019, is defined by the constitution as a symbol of the state. Government runs through the Diet and the prime minister chosen from its members.
- What is the National Diet?
- The bicameral parliament, made up of the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors. The prime minister is chosen from among its members rather than elected separately.
- What is Article 9 of the Japanese constitution?
- The clause in the 1947 constitution that renounces war as a sovereign right. How far it limits the Self-Defense Forces is the sharpest running argument in Japanese politics.
Japan · Nature & Wildlife
Wildlife and nature in Japan
Forest still covers about two thirds of the country, kept by mountains too steep to be worth clearing. The island chain spans enough latitude that one national wildlife list holds brown bears and coral reefs.
Commonly asked
- Why do Japanese macaques bathe in hot springs?
- The snow monkeys of Jigokudani live further north than any other primate and use the springs for warmth through the winter. The behaviour began at one troop in the 1960s and spread within it.
- What animals are native to Japan?
- The Japanese macaque, the sika deer that roam Nara, the red-crowned crane of Hokkaido and the Iriomote cat, one of the rarest wild cats anywhere. Brown bears live in Hokkaido, and coral reefs sit off Okinawa.
- How much of Japan is forest?
- Roughly two thirds, an unusually high share for a country this densely populated. The country maintains 34 national parks.
Japan · Food & Cuisine
Japanese food
Rice, seasonal vegetables and seafood, seasoned lightly enough that the ingredients taste of themselves. The savoury depth Western cooking gets from meat comes here from a kelp and bonito stock.
Commonly asked
- What is washoku?
- The traditional Japanese diet, added to the UNESCO intangible heritage list in 2013. It is built on rice, seasonal produce and seafood, prepared to preserve rather than cover the taste of what goes in.
- What is dashi?
- The stock underneath most Japanese cooking, made from kombu kelp and dried bonito flakes. It supplies the savoury base that miso soup, simmered dishes and noodle broths are built on.
- Is ramen actually Japanese?
- It arrived with Chinese immigrants around 1900 and was reworked until it read as thoroughly Japanese, much as tempura came from Portuguese missionaries in the 16th century. Tokyo now holds more Michelin stars than any other city.
Japan · Landmarks
Landmarks of Japan
A near-symmetrical volcano that has been painted for centuries, the densest concentration of historic sites in Kyoto, and a 634-meter tower at the other end of the same country.
Commonly asked
- Can you climb Mount Fuji?
- Yes, during the official summer season, and several hundred thousand people do each year. Outside it the huts close and the weather above the treeline turns dangerous.
- What is Fushimi Inari?
- The shrine outside Kyoto whose thousands of vermilion torii gates climb the hillside in a near-continuous tunnel. Each gate was donated, and the donor’s name is carved on the back.
- What is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial?
- The preserved shell of a building left standing almost directly beneath the 1945 atomic blast, kept as it was found. It anchors the Peace Memorial Park and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Japan · People & Society
People of Japan
A population that peaked around 2010 and has fallen every year since, the oldest of any large country, and about 37 million of it inside one metropolitan area.
Commonly asked
- Why is Japan’s population shrinking?
- The fertility rate is near 1.2 births per woman against the 2.1 needed to hold steady, and immigration has historically been very low. The total has fallen every year since around 2010.
- How old is the average person in Japan?
- The median age is close to 49, among the highest anywhere, and life expectancy of roughly 84 years is the longest of any large country.
- How big is Tokyo?
- Greater Tokyo holds about 37 million residents, making it the largest metropolitan area on the planet. Around 92 percent of Japanese people live in cities.