The Ryukyu Islands, which include Okinawa, are a chain to the south of Kyushu. The country’s five main islands, from north to south, are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu and Okinawa. On March 11, 2011, Japan suffered the Tōhoku earthquake—the largest by magnitude in its recorded history—which, along with the ensuing tsunami, triggered the Fukushima nuclear accident. The war cost Japan millions of lives and many of its conquered territories, including de jure parts of Japan such as Korea, Taiwan, Karafuto, and the Kurils.
The Pacific coast features a humid subtropical climate that experiences milder winters with occasional snowfall and hot, humid summers because of the southeast seasonal wind. The mountains of the Chūgoku and Shikoku regions shelter the Seto Inland Sea from seasonal winds, bringing mild weather year-round. The northernmost region, Hokkaido, has a humid continental climate with long, cold winters and very warm to cool summers. The climate of Japan is predominantly temperate but varies greatly from north to south. It has the 17th highest natural disaster risk as measured in the 2016 World Risk Index.
The culture of Japan is well known around the world, particularly its popular culture as expressed in animation, art, comics, cuisine, fashion, films, music, television, theater, and video games. Widely considered a great power and the only Asian member of the G7, it maintains one of the world’s strongest militaries but has constitutionally renounced its right to declare war. Since the collapse of the Japanese asset price bubble in the early 1990s, it has experienced a prolonged period of economic stagnation referred to as the Lost Decades. It underwent rapid economic growth in the following decades and became one of the first major non-NATO allies of the U.S.

Modern era

The country hosted the official 2006 Basketball World Championship and co-hosted the 2023 Basketball World Championship. Super GT is the most popular national racing series in Japan, while Super Formula is the top-level domestic open-wheel series. Green tea is produced in Japan and prepared in forms such as matcha, used in the Japanese tea ceremony.
Animals such as the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster serve a major role in science as experimental models. Working animals including cattle and horses have been used for work and transport from the first days of agriculture. The human population exploits a large number of other animal species for food, both of domesticated livestock species in animal husbandry and, mainly at sea, by hunting wild species. Since then, the last four have all been subsumed into a single phylum, the Chordata, while his Insecta (which included the crustaceans and arachnids) and basswin Vermes have been renamed or broken up.
Most animals rely on biomass and bioenergy produced by plants and phytoplanktons (collectively called producers) through photosynthesis. Selective pressures imposed on one another lead to an evolutionary arms race between predator and prey, resulting in various antagonistic/competitive coevolutions. In carnivorous or omnivorous species, predation is a consumer–resource interaction where the predator feeds on another organism, its prey, who often evolves anti-predator adaptations to avoid being fed upon. These fuse to form zygotes, which develop via mitosis into a hollow sphere, called a blastula.

• Most appear to belong to two major lineages, the protostomes and the deuterostomes.
• Japan has close economic and military relations with the United States, with which it maintains a security alliance.
• Japan is widely considered to be a great power due to its economic power and political, cultural, and military influence.
• Animals such as the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster serve a major role in science as experimental models.
• Nippon, the original Sino-Japanese reading of the characters, is favored for official uses, including on Japanese banknotes and postage stamps.
• Japan ranked seventh in the world in tonnage of fish caught and captured 3,167,610 metric tons of fish in 2016, down from an annual average of 4,000,000 tons over the previous decade.

EX Extinct EW Extinct in the Wild CR Critically Endangered EN Endangered VU Vulnerable NT Near Threatened LC Least Concern Oak Toad Oarfish Ocean Perch Ocean Pout Ocean Whitefish Oceanic Whitetip Shark Ocellated Turkey Ocelot Octopus Oenpelli python Oilfish Okapi Old English Sheepdog Old House Borer Oleander Hawk Moth Olingo Olive Baboon Olive python Olive Sea Snake Olm Olympic Marmot Onagadori Chicken Onager Opabinia Opah Opaleye (Rudderfish) Opossum Oranda Goldfish Orange Baboon Tarantula Orange Dream Ball Python Orange Roughy Orange Spider Orange Tanager (Orange-Headed Tanager) Orange-Crowned Warbler Orangutan Orb Weaver Orchard Oriole Orchid Dottyback Oregon Spotted Frog Ori-Pei Oribi Oriental Cockroach Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher Orinoco Crocodile Ornate Bichir Ornate Black-Tailed Rattlesnake Ornate Box Turtle Ornithocheirus Ornithomimus Ortolan Bunting Oscar Fish Osprey Ostracod Ostrich Otter Otterhound Ovenbird Oviraptor Owl Owl Butterfly Owlfly (Ascalaphidae) Ox Oxpecker Oyster Oyster Toadfish Ozark Bass Major animal paintings include Albrecht Dürer’s 1515 The Rhinoceros, and George Stubbs’s c. Some medicines such as the cancer drug trabectedin are based on toxins or other molecules of animal origin.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is Japan’s national space agency; it conducts space, planetary, and aviation research, and leads development of rockets and satellites. The country has produced twenty-two Nobel laureates in either physics, chemistry or medicine, and three Fields medalists. Japan has the second highest number of researchers in science and technology per capita in the world with 14 per 1000 employees. Relative to gross domestic product, Japan’s research and development budget is the sixth or seventh highest in the world, with 907,400 researchers sharing a 22-trillion-yen research and development budget as of 2023update. However, Japan’s video game sector remains a major industry; in 2014, Japan’s consumer video game market grossed $9.6 billion, with $5.8 billion coming from mobile gaming.

Bluetick Coonhound

In 1185, following the defeat of the Taira clan by the Minamoto clan in the Genpei War, samurai Minamoto no Yoritomo established a military government at Kamakura. In 784, Emperor Kanmu moved the capital, settling on Heian-kyō (modern-day Kyoto) in 794. The period is characterized by the appearance of a nascent literary culture with the completion of the Kojiki (712) and Nihon Shoki (720), as well as the development of Buddhist-inspired artwork and architecture. The Nara period (710–784) marked the emergence of a Japanese state centered on the Imperial Court in Heijō-kyō (modern Nara).

Species estimates shown here are based on numbers described scientifically; much larger estimates have been calculated based on various means of prediction, and these can vary wildly. Other animals may have very specific feeding behaviours, such as hawksbill sea turtles which mainly eat sponges. In sponges, blastula larvae swim to a new location, attach to the seabed, and develop into a new sponge. Japan is the most successful Asian Rugby Union country and hosted the 2019 IRB Rugby World Cup. The country gained the hosting rights for the official Women’s Volleyball World Championship on five occasions, more than any other country.

• From the 12th century, actual power was held by military aristocrats known as shōgun and feudal lords called daimyō, enforced by warrior nobility named samurai.
• On April 1, 2019, Japan enacted its revised immigration law, protecting the rights of foreign workers to help reduce labor shortages in certain sectors.
• The mountains of the Chūgoku and Shikoku regions shelter the Seto Inland Sea from seasonal winds, bringing mild weather year-round.
• The Japanese language is Japan’s de facto national language and the primary written and spoken language of most people in the country.
• Adopting Western political, judicial, and military institutions, the Cabinet organized the Privy Council, introduced the Meiji Constitution (November 29, 1890), and assembled the Imperial Diet.
• Selective pressures imposed on one another lead to an evolutionary arms race between predator and prey, resulting in various antagonistic/competitive coevolutions.
• The military is governed by the Ministry of Defense, and primarily consists of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, and the Japan Air Self-Defense Force.

Japan is an ethnically and culturally homogeneous society, with the Japanese people forming 97.4% of the country’s population. On April 1, 2019, Japan enacted its revised immigration law, protecting the rights of foreign workers to help reduce labor shortages in certain sectors. The country has therefore aimed to diversify its sources and maintain high levels of energy efficiency. The high-speed Shinkansen (bullet trains) that connect major cities are known for their safety and punctuality. The explorer entered a lunar orbit on October 4, 2007, and was deliberately crashed into the Moon on June 11, 2009. Japan’s plans in space exploration include building a Moon base and landing astronauts by 2030.