Portal:Japan

Coordinates: 36°30′N 139°00′E / 36.5°N 139°E / 36.5; 139
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Japan is an island country in East Asia. It is in the northwest Pacific Ocean and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans an archipelago of 14,125 islands, with the five main islands being Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Tokyo is the country's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto.

Japan has over 125 million inhabitants and is the 11th most populous country in the world, as well as one of the most densely populated. About three-fourths of the country's terrain is mountainous, concentrating its highly urbanized population on narrow coastal plains. Japan is divided into 47 administrative prefectures and eight traditional regions. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world. Japan has the world's highest life expectancy, although it is experiencing a population decline due to its very low birth rate.

Japan has been inhabited since the Upper Paleolithic period (30,000 BC). Between the fourth and ninth centuries AD, the kingdoms of Japan became unified under an emperor and the imperial court based in Heian-kyō. Beginning in the 12th century, political power was held by a series of military dictators (shōgun) and feudal lords (daimyō), and enforced by a class of warrior nobility (samurai). After a century-long period of civil war, the country was reunified in 1603 under the Tokugawa shogunate, which enacted an isolationist foreign policy. In 1854, a United States fleet forced Japan to open trade to the West, which led to the end of the shogunate and the restoration of imperial power in 1868. In the Meiji period, the Empire of Japan adopted a Western-modeled constitution, and pursued a program of industrialization and modernization. Amidst a rise in militarism and overseas colonization, Japan invaded China in 1937 and entered World War II as an Axis power in 1941. After suffering defeat in the Pacific War and two atomic bombings, Japan surrendered in 1945 and came under a seven-year Allied occupation, during which it adopted a new constitution.

Under the 1947 constitution, Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature, the National Diet. Japan is a developed country and a great power, with one of the largest economies by nominal GDP. Japan has renounced its right to declare war, though it maintains a Self-Defense Force that ranks as one of the world's strongest militaries. A global leader in the automotive, robotics, and electronics industries, the country has made significant contributions to science and technology, and is one of the world's largest exporters and importers. It is part of multiple major international and intergovernmental institutions. (Full article...)

The Warped Ones (aka Season of Heat, Wild Love-Makers and The Weird Lovemakers) is a 1960 Japanese Sun Tribe film directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara and starring Tamio Kawachi, Eiji Go, Yuko Chishiro and Noriko Matsumoto. It was produced and distributed by the Nikkatsu Company. The story concerns the young hoodlum Akira, his friends, their transgressions and specifically their revenge on the couple that got him sent to jail, a reporter and his fiancée, by means of assault, vehicular and sexual. When the fiancée finds herself pregnant by Akira she enlists his help with her finance who has become distant since the attack. The film was a return to a subset of the youth film genre that had been shut down at the behest of moral outrage several years earlier. Often compared by critics to Breathless (1960) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955), it is a stylistic departure from studio norms, driven by its jazz score and employing filmic techniques described as being as energetic and frantic as its characters. It achieved success in Japan and was followed by Black Sun (1964), featuring many of the same cast, crew and characters, with the addition of acclaimed drummer Max Roach to the soundtrack. Audubon Films released The Warped Ones in the United States in 1963 where it was marketed as a sexploitation film. (Full article...)

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On this day...

April 25:

Events

  • 1185 - 壇ノ浦の合戦で、平家が滅亡。 (Japanese Date: Twenty-fourth Day of the Third Month, 1185)
  • 1644 - 大明帝国滅亡 (Japanese Date: Nineteenth Day of the Third Month, 1644)
  • 1683 - 八百屋お七が火あぶりの刑となる。歌舞伎などの演目でも知られる八百屋の娘「お七」が放火の罪で鈴ケ森で火あぶりの極刑に処せられる。お七はその時18歳、お七が丙午生まれだったことから、丙午生まれの女子が疎まれるようになった (Japanese Date: Twenty-ninth Day of the Third Month, 1683)
  • 1868 - 福沢諭吉が慶応義塾を開校。私塾を芝に移し、年号にちなみ慶應義塾と改称する。 (Japanese Date: Third Day of the Fourth Month, 1868)
  • 1888 - 市町村制が公布される。
  • 1926 - ドイツ製入場券自動販売機が登場
  • 1934 - 吉本興業、東京・新橋演舞場で「特選漫才大会」を開く。
  • 1980 - モスクワオリンピック不参加を政府が発表。
  • 1980 - 大貫久男さん、東京・銀座で1億円入りの包みを拾う。東京・銀座の道路わきで、トラック運転手がふろしき包みを拾う。中は、1万円札で、1億円。警察に届け、一時は、「犯罪に関する金か!?」と騒がれるが、6ケ月と14日の届け出期間を過ぎても落とし主が現れず11月9日に時効成立。1億円は大貫さんへ。
  • 1992 - ロック歌手、尾崎豊急死。泥酔した状態で東京都内の民家で保護されたが、肺水腫で死亡した。「十七歳の地図」で熱狂的な支持を得、若者のカリスマ的存在でもあった。

Births

In the news

22 April 2024 – China–Japan relations
Controversies surrounding Yasukuni Shrine
China objects to an offering that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine on Sunday. (Reuters)
15 April 2024 – Iran–Israel proxy conflict
2024 Iranian strikes in Israel, Iran–Japan relations
Japan increases its four-stage danger ranking level for most of Iran, including Tehran, to Level 3, which urges Japanese citizens to avoid all travel to Iran. (The Japan News)
3 April 2024 – 2024 Hualien earthquake
A magnitude 7.4 earthquake strikes off the coast of Taiwan, prompting tsunami warnings for Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. A large section of the uninhabited Guishan Island collapses into the ocean. Nine people are killed in Taiwan, including four by rockfalls, with more than 930 others injured. (AP) (Al Jazeera)
1 April 2024 –
North Korea fires a ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan near South Korean territory. (AP)

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Satoshi Kon (今 敏, Kon Satoshi, October 12, 1963 – August 24, 2010) was a Japanese film director, animator, screenwriter and manga artist from Sapporo, Hokkaido, and a member of the Japanese Animation Creators Association (JAniCA). He was a graduate of the Graphic Design department of the Musashino Art University. He is best known for his acclaimed anime films Perfect Blue (1997), Millennium Actress (2001), Tokyo Godfathers (2003), and Paprika (2006), and the TV series Paranoia Agent (2004).

He died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 46 on August 24, 2010. (Full article...)

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Flag of Shizuoka Prefecture
Shizuoka Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region on Honshū island. The capital is the city of Shizuoka. The prefecture was previously divided into Tōtōmi Province, Suruga Province and Izu Province. The most noted history of the prefecture is that it was once home to the first Tokugawa Shōgun. The region was held by Tokugawa Ieyasu until he conquered the lands of the Hōjō clan in the Kantō region and gave his lands to the stewardship of Oda Nobunaga. After becoming shōgun Tokugawa took the land back for his family, particularly putting the area around modern-day Shizuoka city under direct shogunal supervision. It once again became the residence of the Tokugawa family after 1868, with the creation of Shizuoka han. Shizuoka Prefecture is an elongated region following the coast of the Pacific Ocean at the Suruga Bay. In the west, the prefecture extends deep into the Japan Alps, while farther east it becomes a narrower coast bounded on the north by Mount Fuji, until it comes to the Izu Peninsula, a popular resort area pointing south into the Pacific. Every 100–150 years, an earthquake of disastrous proportions called the Tokai Earthquake occurs in the Shizuoka Prefecture. The previous earthquake was in 1854.

Did you know... – show different entries

Midtown Tower in Tokyo, Japan

  • ... that, at 248.1 metres (814 ft), Midtown Tower (pictured) is the tallest building in Tokyo?

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The following are images from various Japan-related articles on Wikipedia.

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36°30′N 139°00′E / 36.5°N 139°E / 36.5; 139