The Geography of Japan

 

I would like to explain the basics of the geography of Japan.

If you look at a world map, Japan is small. But did you know that Japan's exclusive economic zone（an area of coastal water and seabed within a certain distance of a country's coastline, to which the country claims exclusive rights for fishing, drilling, and other economic activities), including its territorial waters, is quite large? It is 1,726,000 square miles, the sixth largest area in the world. Japan has jurisdiction over a very large ocean.

The length of Japan's coastline is 21,160 miles. By comparison, the coastline of the United States is 12,380 miles long. The length of the earth's equator is 2,4850 miles, which gives you an idea of how long the Japanese coastline is. This is due to the fact that Japan has so many islands, and the uneven topography of the coast itself.

There are currently 194 nations in the world. On a map, the island nation of Japan looks small. But when it comes to land area, Japan is 50th largest. That means there are 134 countries in the world that have a smaller land mass than Japan. In Asia, Japan is 17th out of 47 countries. If you look at the countries of Europe, only five of the 43 countries are larger than Japan - Russia, Ukraine, France, Spain and Sweden. 

Japan covers a wide spectrum of climates. Hokkaido in the north belongs to the subarctic zone and its seas are covered with ice floes in the winter. Okinawa and the Ogasawara Islands in the south belong to the subtropical zone. The southern islands of Okinawa and the Ogasawara Islands belong to the subtropical zone, where palms and bananas grow naturally. There is not a single European country that has such a wide range of climates within its borders.

There are twenty-four countries in the world, like Singapore, that are smaller than Tokyo prefecture. Japan seems small when compared to large countries like Russia and the United States. By the way, Russia and the U.S. are about 45 and 25 times larger than Japan respectively. The disparity between the two countries is extreme.

In 2000, Japan's population density was 334 people per square kilometer. Among the major countries, Bangladesh, South Korea and the Netherlands have a higher population density than Japan. Bangladesh, however, is not more than twice as crowded as Japan. Located in the Ganges River delta, Bangladesh is almost entirely composed of flat, habitable land.

Japan, on the other hand, has plains covering only 13% of its land. Do you know what the population density of the habitable land is? It is a formula that divides the habitable area of Japan, excluding mountains, lakes, rivers, deserts, etc., by the population. That gives us a population density of 2,796 people in Japan, which is much higher than the population density of Bangladesh, Korea and the Netherlands. Japan's land is 90% mountainous and forested, and only a few flatlands are inhabitable.

　

However, there are countries that are more densely populated than Japan. Singapore has a population density of 6,048 people. This is also surprising if you only look at the numbers, but Singapore is a city-state and most of its land is inhabitable. The population density of Tokyo's 23 wards is 12,698 people per square kilometer. Its congestion level is still the highest in the world.

China, India, Brazil, etc., have larger territories than Japan, but their borders, which are adjacent to other countries by land, are longer than their coastlines. This means their water area is smaller than that of New Zealand and Japan, which are surrounded on all sides by the sea.

Japan has many islands in the ocean, such as the Nansei Islands and the Ogasawara Islands, as part of its territory. If you added the total of the ocean territory surrounding these islands, they would come to a total of 166,000 square miles, more than Japan's entire land area of 146,700 square miles.

The Japanese archipelago, which stretches 2,051 miles north and south, is made up of many islands, large and small. How many islands does it consist of? Ultimately, the number of islands is impossible to determine, because there is no clear legal definition of the term “island.” Estimates range from about 3,000 to 6,852, depending on how the size of an island is defined.

　

Japan is made up of countless islands of all sizes. 99% of these islands are uninhabited, and only 421 are inhabited. 99.4% of Japan's total population lives on the 5 islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku, and Okinawa. The other islands are called remote islands.

Being an island nation lends Japan a unique character compared to other countries. This has had a big influence on daily life in Japan.