Japan

Preface

The Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nihon or Nippon and literally means "the origin of the sun". The character nichi (日) means "sun" or "day"; hon (本) means "base" or "origin". The compound therefore means "origin of the sun" and is the source of the popular Western epithet "Land of the Rising Sun". As the British diplomat and historian of Japan Sir George Sansom put it just after World War II, "Few countries have been more copiously described thatn Japan, and perhaps few have been less thoroghly understood."Home to one of the world's oldest civilizations and most advanced societes, Japan remains one of the most difficult nations for outsiders to grasp.

Interesting Facts about Japan

  1. Japan has a total of 6,852 islands extending along the Pacific coast. Some are tropical islands with nearby coral reefs; others have mountain ranges covered in snow. Nearly all people live on just four of the islands.
  2. Japan has nine forest ecoregions which reflect the climate and geography of the islands.
  3. Island Honshu, which includes the nation's capital, Tokyo, experiences hot, steamy summers, beautiful autumns, chilly winters, and a fifth season, called fuyu, the rainy season.
  4. In Japan, money is rarely passed directly from hand to hand, so when paying for an item or service, place your money on the small tray provided.
  5. In 1800s, a man named Mikimoto Kokichi, the son of a Japanese noodle maker, discovered a way to make oysters form perfectly round pearls. Using a needle, he placed a piece of mussel shell inside an oyster, forcing it to form a pearl. His method created a huge new cultured pearl industry.
  6. Manga is a uniquely Japanese type of illustrated book. There are many kinds of manga books, such as action, mystery, science fiction, romance, and sports. Manga books are written and illustrated for people of all ages.
  7. Literacy rate is 99% in Japan. Education is respected in Japan, and so are educators.
  8. Japan maintains one of the largest military budgets of any country in the world.
  9. The Emperor's Birthday is a national holiday.
  10. Most Japanese continue to see Japan as a monocultural society. About 98.5% of Japanese people trace their heritage to the Yamato clan. Other ethnic groups in Japan today include ethnic Koreans, at 0.5 percent, and ethnic Chinese, at 0.4 percent. Other small ethnic groups combine to make 0.6 percent of the population.

Visit Japan

nature

Population

Japanese society is linguistically, ethnically and culturally homogeneous, composed of 98.1% ethnic Japanese, with small populations of foreign workers. Zainichi Koreans, Chinese, Filipinos, Brazilians mostly of Japanese descent, Peruvians mostly of Japanese descent and Americans are among the small minority groups in Japan. In 2003, there were about 134,700 non-Latin American Western (not including more than 33,000 American military personnel and their dependents stationed throughout the country) and 345,500 Latin American expatriates, 274,700 of whom were Brazilians (said to be primarily Japanese descendants, or nikkeijin, along with their spouses),the largest community of Westerners. A growing number of younger Japanese are not marrying or remain childless. In 2011, Japan's population dropped for a fifth year, falling by 204,000 people to 126.24 million people. This was the greatest decline since at least 1947, when comparable figures were first compiled. This decline was made worse by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which killed nearly 16,000 people. Japan's population is expected to drop to 95 million by 2050; demographers and government planners are currently in a major debate over how to cope with this problem.

population

Food

Japanese cooking is the outcome of a long history and has a solid cultural background. The essence of Japan's culture is its closeness to nature. Like Japanese painting and poetry, Japanese cooking, too, is the result of an acute awareness of the seasons. Making the most of nature's seasonal offerings with the utmost culinary artistry probably gave rise to the traditional formal Japanese meal as we know it today, with its small courses - each a work of art on which much time and thought are spent. The greater the variety, the the more extravagant the hospitality. The very first rule is to avoid frozen foods. Dried foods are all right, but freezing destroys texture. Freshness and naturalness are the sine qua non of Japanese cuisine. The Japanese meal is divided into consecutive courses according to method of preparation - a grilled dish comes before a steamed dish, and a steamed dish before simmered foods, then follows deep-fried foods and vinegared salad, and so on. Enjoyment. That is the aim of any good cuisine. The food is meant to be eaten and enjoyed. Food is only good if you enjoy eating, however pleasing it may be to the eye.

japanese art

Creative Japan

Japanese Art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture, ink painting and calligraphy on silk and paper, ukiyo-e paintings and woodblock prints, ceramics, origami, and more recently manga which is modern Japanese cartoons and comics along with a myriad of other types. It has a long history, ranging from the beginnings of human habitation in Japan, sometime in the 10th millennium BC, to the present-day country. Japanese art is often focused on nuances of emotions, and works tend to be so charged with tension that altering the position of any part would drastically change the overall effect. This intense feeling for texture, color, form and space is intended to satisfy the spectator's need for emotional assurance and calm. The key to understanding the relationship of the Japanese artist or craftsman to his work lies in one word: union. Whether it be chopstick-rest one finds in a fish restaurant, or signed painting, one sees a particularly developed symbiosis bonding the artist or craftsman and the product. Painters of old caught exactly this quality of creative absorption in their depictions of carpenters, tatami floor-mat and bamboo-blind makers and mounters of paintings. In literature, the perfection of renga or linked verse is believed to come only through repeated group practice among the poets. The artist and his materials, clay, wood or ink-brush and paper, together create the work. This factor is of paramount importance.

Credits

General Information about Japan

  • Japanese art
  • Wikipedia
  • The History of Nations, Japan, Greenhaven Press, 2004
  • Insight Guides, Japan, 2016

Tourism in Japan

Japanese Cooking and Art

  • Shizuo Tsuji, Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, 1980
  • Joan Stanley-Baker, Japanese Art, 1984
  • Insight Guides, Japan, 2016