Japanese language in the context of Verb–object word order

The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world, consisting of the Kantō region of Japan (including Tokyo Metropolis and the prefectures of Chiba, Gunma, Ibaraki, Kanagawa, Saitama, and Tochigi) as well as the prefecture of Yamanashi of the neighboring Chūbu region. In Japanese, it is referred to by various terms, one of the most common being Capital Region (首都圏, Shuto-ken).

As of 2016, the United Nations estimates the total population at 38,140,000. It covers an area of approximately 13,500 km (5,200 mi), giving it a population density of 2,642 people/km. It is the second-largest single metropolitan area in the world in terms of built-up or urban function landmass at 8,547 km (3,300 mi), behind only the New York City metropolitan area at 11,642 km (4,495 mi). With over US$2 trillion in GDP, Tokyo remains the second-largest metropolitan economy in the world, also behind New York.

Honshu (Japanese: 本州, Hepburn: Honshū; pronounced [hoꜜɰ̃.ɕɯː] ; lit. 'main province'), historically known as Akitsushima (秋津島; lit. 'dragonfly island'), is the largest of Japan's four main islands. It lies between the Pacific Ocean (east) and the Sea of Japan (west). It is the seventh-largest island in the world, and the second-most populous after the Indonesian island of Java.

Honshu had a population of 104 million as of 2017, constituting 81.3% of the entire population of Japan, and mostly concentrated in the coastal areas and plains. Approximately 30% of the total population resides in the Greater Tokyo Area on the Kantō Plain. As the historical center of Japanese cultural and political power, the island includes several past Japanese capitals, including Kyoto, Nara, and Kamakura. Much of the island's southern shore forms part of the Taiheiyō Belt, a megalopolis that spans several of the Japanese islands. Honshu also contains Japan's highest mountain, Mount Fuji, and its largest lake, Lake Biwa.

Chiyoda (Japanese: 千代田区, Hepburn: Chiyoda-ku; IPA: [tɕijoda] ), a.k.a. Chiyoda City in English, is a special ward of Tokyo, Japan. Located in the heart of Tokyo's 23 special wards, Chiyoda consists of the Imperial Palace and a surrounding radius of about a kilometer (1000 yards), and is known as the political and financial center of Japan. As of October 2020, the ward has a population of 66,680, and a population density of 5,709 people per km (14,786 per sq. mi.), making it by far the least populated of the special wards. The residential part of Chiyoda is at the heart of Yamanote, Tokyo's traditional upper-class residential area, with Banchō, Kōjimachi, and Kioichō considered the most exclusive neighbourhoods in the entire city. The total area is 11.66 km (4½ sq. mi.), of which the Imperial Palace, Hibiya Park, National Museum of Modern Art, and Yasukuni Shrine take up approximately 2.6 km (1 sq. mi.), or 22%.

Chiyoda is known as the economic center of Japan; the districts of Otemachi, Marunouchi and Yurakucho east of the palace (an area colloquially known as "Daimaruyu") house the headquarters of 19 Fortune 500 companies, is the source of roughly 10% of the combined revenue of all Japanese companies, and produced the equivalent of around a quarter of the country's GDP in 2017. With a day population of around 850,000, its day/night population ratio is by far the highest of all municipalities in Japan. Tokyo Station, Tokyo's main inter-city rail terminal and the busiest train station in Japan in terms of scheduled trains, is also located in Chiyoda.

Shinjuku (Japanese: 新宿区, Hepburn: Shinjuku-ku; IPA: [ɕiɲdʑɯkɯ] ), officially called Shinjuku City, is one of the 23 special wards of Tokyo. It is located to the west of the Japanese capital.

Since the end of World War II, Shinjuku has become a major secondary center of Tokyo (fukutoshin), rivaling the original city center in Marunouchi. Today, it is a major commercial and administrative center, housing the busiest railway station in the world (Shinjuku Station) as well as the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, the administrative center of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

The Japanese archipelago (Japanese: 日本列島, Hepburn: Nippon/Nihon Rettō; Japanese pronunciation: [ɲip.pon/ɲi.hon ɾeꜜt.toː]) is an archipelago of 14,125 islands that form the country of Japan. It extends over 3,000 km (1,900 mi) from the Sea of Okhotsk in the northeast to the East China and Philippine seas in the southwest along the Pacific coast of the Eurasian continent, and consists of three island arcs from north to south: the Northeastern Japan Arc, the Southwestern Japan Arc, and the Ryukyu Island Arc. The Daitō Islands, the Izu–Bonin–Mariana Arc, and the Kuril Islands neighbor the archipelago.

Japan is the largest island country in East Asia and the fourth-largest island country in the world with 377,975.24 km (145,937.06 sq mi). It has an exclusive economic zone of 4,470,000 km (1,730,000 sq mi).

Agriculture, forestry, and fishing (Japanese: 農林水産, nōrinsuisan) form the primary sector of industry of the Japanese economy together with the Japanese mining industry. Together, they account for 1.3% of gross national product; only 20% of Japan's land is suitable for cultivation, and the agricultural economy is highly subsidized.

Agriculture, forestry, and fishing dominated the Japanese economy until the 1940s, but thereafter declined into relative unimportance (see Agriculture in the Empire of Japan). In the late 19th century (Meiji period), these sectors had accounted for more than 80% of employment. Employment in agriculture declined in the prewar period, but the sector was still the largest employer (about 50% of the work force) by the end of World War II. It was further declined to 23.5% in 1965, 11.9% in 1977, and to 7.2% in 1988. The importance of agriculture in the national economy later continued its rapid decline, with the share of net agricultural production in GNP finally reduced between 1975 and 1989 from 4.1% to 3% In the late 1980s, 85.5% of Japan's farmers were also engaged in occupations outside farming, and most of these part-time farmers earned most of their income from nonfarming activities.

Sakoku (Japanese: 鎖国; IPA: [sa̠ko̞kɯ̟]; lit. 'chained country') was the isolationist foreign policy of the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate under which, during the Edo period (from 1603 to 1868), relations and trade between Japan and other countries were severely limited, and almost all foreign nationals were banned from entering Japan, while common Japanese people were kept from leaving the country. The policy was enacted by the shogunate government (bakufu) under Tokugawa Iemitsu through a number of edicts and policies from 1633 to 1639.

Japan was not completely isolated under the sakoku policy. Sakoku was a system in which strict regulations were placed on commerce and foreign relations by the shogunate and certain feudal domains (han). There was extensive trade with China through the port of Nagasaki, in the far west of Japan, with a residential area for the Chinese. The policy stated that the only European influence permitted was the Dutch factory at Dejima in Nagasaki. Western scientific, technical and medical innovations flowed into Japan through Rangaku ("Dutch learning").

The Perry Expedition (Japanese: 黒船来航, kurofune raikō, "Arrival of the Black Ships") was a diplomatic and military expedition in two separate voyages (1852–1853 and 1854–1855) to the Tokugawa shogunate (徳川幕府) by warships of the United States Navy. The goals of this expedition included exploration, surveying, and the establishment of diplomatic relations and negotiation of trade agreements with the various nations in the region. Opening contact with the government of Japan was considered a top priority of the expedition, and was one of the key reasons for its inception.

The expedition was commanded by Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, under orders from President Millard Fillmore. Perry's primary goal was to force an end to Japan's 220-year-old policy of isolation and to open Japanese ports to American trade, through the use of gunboat diplomacy if necessary. The Perry Expedition led directly to the establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and the western Great Powers, and eventually to the collapse of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate and the restoration of the Emperor. Following the expedition, Japan's burgeoning trade routes with the world led to the cultural trend of Japonisme, in which aspects of Japanese culture influenced art in Europe and America.

Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as oink, meow, roar, and chirp, among other sounds such as beep or hiccup.

Onomatopoeia can differ by language: it conforms to some extent to the broader linguistic system. Hence, the sound of a clock may be expressed variously across languages: as tick tock in English, tic tac in Spanish and Italian (see photo), dī dā in Mandarin, kachi kachi in Japanese, or ṭik-ṭik in Hindi, Urdu, and Bengali.

A mora (pl. morae or moras; often symbolized μ) is a smallest unit of timing, equal to or shorter than a syllable, that theoretically or perceptually exists in some spoken languages in which phonetic length (such as vowel length) matters significantly. For example, in the Japanese language, the name of the city Ōsaka (おおさか) consists of three syllables (O-sa-ka) but four morae (O-o-sa-ka), since the first syllable, Ō, is pronounced with a long vowel (the others being short). Thus, a short vowel contains one mora and is called monomoraic, while a long vowel contains two and is called bimoraic. Extra-long syllables with three morae (trimoraic) are relatively rare. Such metrics based on syllables are also referred to as syllable weight. In Japanese, certain consonants also stand on their own as individual morae and thus are monomoraic.

The term comes from the Latin word for 'linger, delay', which was also used to translate the Greek word χρόνος : chrónos ('time') in its metrical sense.

Hokkaido (Japanese: 北海道, Hepburn: Hokkaidō; pronounced [hok.kaꜜi.doː] , lit. 'Northern Sea Circuit'; Ainu: Aynu Mosir, lit. 'Land of the Ainu') is the second-largest and northernmost of Japan's four main islands. Together with its surrounding islands, it comprises the largest and northernmost prefecture, making up its own region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō from Honshu. The two islands are connected by railway via the Seikan Tunnel.

The largest city on Hokkaido is its capital, Sapporo, which is also its only ordinance-designated city. Sakhalin lies about 43 kilometres (27 mi) to the north of Hokkaidō. To the east and northeast are the Kuril Islands, which are administered by Russia. The four most southerly are claimed by Japan. Hokkaido's position on the northern end of the Japanese archipelago results in a colder climate, with the island seeing significant snowfall each winter. Despite the harsher climate, it serves as an agricultural breadbasket for many crops.

Han (Japanese: 藩, "domain") is a Japanese historical term for the estate of a daimyo in the Edo period (1603–1868) and early Meiji period (1868–1912). Han or Bakufu-han (daimyo domain) served as a system of de facto administrative divisions of Japan alongside the de jure provinces until they were abolished in the 1870s.

36°00′N 140°00′E / 36.000°N 140.000°E / 36.000; 140.000

The Kantō Plain (Japanese: 関東平野, Hepburn: Kantō heiya), in the Kantō region of central Honshu, is the largest plain in Japan. Its 17,000 km covers more than half of the region extending over Tokyo, Saitama Prefecture, Kanagawa Prefecture, Chiba Prefecture, Gunma Prefecture, Tochigi Prefecture, and Ibaraki Prefecture.

Hepburn (Japanese: ヘボン式ローマ字, romanized: Hebon-shiki rōmaji, lit. 'Hepburn-style Roman letters') is the main system of romanization for the Japanese language. The system was originally published in 1867 by American Christian missionary and physician James Curtis Hepburn as the standard in the first edition of his Japanese–English dictionary. The system is distinct from other romanization methods in its use of English orthography to phonetically transcribe sounds: for example, the syllable [ɕi] (し) is written as shi and [tɕa] (ちゃ) is written as cha, reflecting their spellings in English (compare to si and tya in the more systematic Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki systems).

In 1886, Hepburn published the third edition of his dictionary, codifying a revised version of the system that is known today as "traditional Hepburn". A version with additional revisions, known as "modified Hepburn", was published in 1908.

Kyoto (/ki.ˈoʊ.toʊ/ or /ˈkjoʊ.toʊ/; Japanese: 京都, Kyōto [kʲoꜜː.to] ), officially Kyoto City (京都市, Kyōto-shi; [kʲoː.toꜜ.ɕi] ), is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. As of 2020, the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it the ninth-most populous city in Japan. More than half (56.8%) of Kyoto Prefecture's population resides in the city. The city is the cultural anchor of the substantially larger Greater Kyoto, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 3.8 million people. It is also part of the even larger Keihanshin metropolitan area, along with Osaka and Kobe.

Kyoto is one of the oldest municipalities in Japan, having been chosen in 794 as the new seat of Japan's imperial court by Emperor Kanmu. The original city, named Heian-kyō, was arranged in accordance with traditional Chinese feng shui following the model of the ancient Chinese capitals of Chang'an and Luoyang. The emperors of Japan ruled from Kyoto in the following eleven centuries until 1869. It was the scene of several key events of the Muromachi period, Sengoku period, and the Boshin War, such as the Ōnin War, the Honnō-ji Incident, the Kinmon incident, and the Battle of Toba–Fushimi. The capital was relocated from Kyoto to Tokyo after the Meiji Restoration. The modern municipality of Kyoto was established in 1889. The city was spared from large-scale destruction during World War II and, as a result, its prewar cultural heritage has mostly been preserved.

The Taiheiyō Belt (Japanese: 太平洋ベルト, Hepburn: Taiheiyō Beruto; lit. "Pacific Belt"), also known as the Tōkaidō corridor, is the megalopolis in Japan extending from Ibaraki Prefecture in the northeast to Fukuoka Prefecture in the southwest, running for almost 1,200 km (750 mi). Its estimated population as of 2011 was about 80 million.

The urbanization zone runs mainly along the Pacific coast (hence the name) of Japan from Kantō region to Osaka, and the Inland Sea (on both sides) to Fukuoka, and is concentrated along the Tōkaidō–Sanyō rail corridor. A view of Japan at night clearly shows a rather dense and continuous strip of light (demarcating urban zones) that delineates the region. The high population is particularly due to the large plains – the Kantō Plain, Kinai Plain, and Nōbi Plain – which facilitate building in otherwise mountainous Japan.

Lake Biwa (Japanese: 琵琶湖, Hepburn: Biwa-ko) is the largest freshwater lake in Japan. It is located entirely within Shiga Prefecture (west-central Honshu), northeast of the former capital city of Kyoto. Lake Biwa is an ancient lake, over 4 million years old. It is estimated to be the 13th oldest lake in the world. Because of its proximity to the country's historical capital Kyoto, references to Lake Biwa appear frequently in Japanese literature, particularly in poetry and in historical accounts of battles.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP; Japanese: 自由民主党, romanized: Jiyū-Minshutō), also known as Jimintō (自民党), is a major conservative and nationalist political party in Japan. Since its foundation in 1955, the LDP has been in power almost continuously—a period called the 1955 System—except from 1993 to 1996, and again from 2009 to 2012.

The LDP was formed in 1955 as a merger of two conservative parties, the Liberal Party and the Japan Democratic Party, and was initially led by prime minister Ichirō Hatoyama. The LDP supported Japan's alliance with the United States and fostered close links between Japanese business and government, playing a major role in the country's economic miracle from the 1960s to early 1970s and subsequent stability under prime ministers including Hayato Ikeda, Eisaku Satō, Kakuei Tanaka, Takeo Fukuda, and Yasuhiro Nakasone. Scandals and economic difficulties led to the LDP losing power in 1993 and 1994, and governing under a non-LDP prime minister from 1994 before regaining power in 1996. In 1999, the LDP entered into a coalition with Komeito.