Japan

With a total area of 377,915 square kilometers, Japan is an archipelago consisting of the four main islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, with Japanese as its official language.

In the early 17th century after decades of civil warfare, the Tokugawa shogunate (a military-led, dynastic government) ushered in an era of isolation and political stability of over 250 years. This period enabled Japan to enjoy a flowering of its indigenous culture. Music, popular stories, kabuki and bunraku (puppet theater), poetry, literature, and art exemplified by beautiful woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e were all aspects of this flowering of culture. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Japan began to intensively modernize and industrialize, and became a regional power. After the conclusion of WWII, Japan recovered to become an economic superpower.

Japan is well known for its large industrial capacity, and is home to some of the largest and most technologically advanced producers of motor vehicles and electronics. Also a leader in fundamental scientific research, Japan has produced many Nobel laureates in the fields of physics, chemistry, and medicine.