The Geography Of Japan

Japan is an island country. This basic geographic fact has shaped their history and the character of their peoples, and is central to the way they think of themselves. The Japanese islands stretch across the north-western corner of the Pacific Ocean, from the northernmost island, the island of Etorofu which is still occupied by the Russians 60 years after the end of the Second World War, to Yonaguni Island off the coast of Taiwan in the south.

All in all there are well over one thousand islands making up the Japanese archipelago, but over 95% of the land area of Japan is made up of just four islands, the four main islands by which Japan is identified. These are called Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu and Shikoku.

The entire country is further south than most Europeans imagine: the northern tip of Japan is roughly on the latitude of Bordeaux, and the southern reaches of the Ryukyu islands stretch to within the tropics. Tokyo is on the same latitude as Los Angeles, or Cairo or Teheran.

The rough range of Japan from north to south equates with the Eastern seaboard of the United States, and much of the climate that Japan lives through can be compared with the Atlantic coastline of America – cold winters, hot summers and regular batterings from strong winds in the late summer and early autumn.

Japan has the further physical disadvantage, shared by the West Coast of the United States but not by the Eastern seaboard, of being a very volcanic country, full of geysers and hot springs, and prone to earthquakes.

Volcanoes And Earthquakes

The volcanoes and earthquakes of Japan are not merely exotic features of a distant land. They are real and active and play an important part in defining how Japanese people live.

Active Volcanoes

Late in 2003, there was concern that Mount Fuji, which had lain dormant since 1707, was showing signs of renewed activity. An eruption by the largest mountain in Japan (3,776 metres high) would have a devastating effect on Tokyo and the surrounding Kanto plain.

There are several active volcanoes in Japan, especially down in Kyushu where Mount Aso, and Sakurajima which erupted violently in 1914, are all active. Showa-Shinzan (‘the New Mountain of the Showa Era’) in Hokkaido was formed between 1943 and 1945 as a result of volcanic activity near Mount Usu. By September 1945, it had reached a height of 408 metres, and it is still rumbling.

Volcanic activity has also created many hot springs all around Japan, where for centuries people have gone to bathe in the naturally heated pools and streams. They still attract millions of visitors each year.

Devastating Earthquakes

The more sinister side of this instability of the earth’s crust shows itself in earthquakes. There are earthquakes every day in Japan, some which cannot be felt and some of which can be devastating. For people unused to them, a first experience of an earthquake can be daunting.

The vast majority of earthquakes are so slight as to be unnoticeable, and even those which you can feel are usually so mild that the sensation is no more than that of being on a slow-moving train. However, major earthquakes can and do occur, and this fact has made a significant difference to the way the Japanese live.

Building To Withstand Earthquakes

Traditional Japanese houses tend to be made of wood. This is not just because it is easiest to build in wood, or that trees are one of the few plentiful natural resources in Japan. It is also because if an earthquake strikes, they will collapse with less chance of causing cataclysmic damage.

They can also easily be rebuilt. In the twentieth century, the importation of modern technology was constrained by the need for it to be earthquake proof. Even today, practically all electric cables are suspended overhead rather than buried underground as they would be in most western countries, because of the danger of disruption by an earthquake.

The American architect Frank Lloyd Wright also had a huge influence on the way buildings are constructed in modern Japan. In 1921 his Imperial Hotel in Tokyo was completed, and in 1923 a huge earthquake struck. Most wooden buildings collapsed, and those that did not were consumed by the fire that followed the earthquake; but the Imperial Hotel survived.

Lloyd Wright had built it of ferro-concrete and based it on a foundation of mud, which allowed the building to sway a little with the earthquake but took the violence out of the tremors. The lessons were quickly learned and since then virtually all new buildings over a certain size have been made of ferro-concrete, using the principles established by Frank Lloyd Wright.

This has not exempted Japan from earthquake damage, as the severe Hanshin earthquake of 1994, which struck Kobe and Osaka, showed only too clearly. However, Japanese anti earthquake technology is far in advance of most other parts of the world, and their public buildings are far more likely to withstand an earthquake than those in other parts of the world, even in those places like California where earthquakes are a real risk.

Mountainous Islands

The country is so seismic because the origins of the Japanese islands are comparatively recent in geological terms. The generally accepted theory is that they were created by the collision of four tectonic plates – the Pacific plate, the Philippine plate, the Amurian plate and the Sea of Okhotsk plate.

This has created a country that is mountainous, with the coastline falling quickly away to deep ocean beds, which make coastal navigation much more dangerous than around Great Britain and northern Europe, for example.

The spine of Japan is very mountainous and runs with short, fast flowing rivers, so much so that barely 20% of the whole country is habitable. The total area, some 378,000 square kilometres, is about half as much again as the area of the United Kingdom, but in terms of habitable area, it is barely half the size of habitable Britain.

Hokkaido

Climate

The climate of Hokkaido, and its main city Sapporo, is sub-Arctic, with deep snow throughout the winter months. The coldest temperature ever recorded in Japan, minus 41 degrees Celsius, was recorded in Asahikawa in Hokkaido.

The annual Snow Festival in Sapporo in February attracts thousands of visitors from all over Japan and elsewhere, and features massive ice carvings, which remain frozen for weeks on end. The Winter Olympics were held there in 1972, but Sapporo remains probably best known within Japan for the local beer company and its main brand, which is also called Sapporo.

The summers in Hokkaido are milder than further south, with average June temperatures around 15 degrees Celsius, several degrees cooler than in Tokyo, and over ten degrees cooler than Kyushu. They are also drier, because Hokkaido is beyond the northern edge of the monsoon belt, which just stretches far enough north to include Tokyo and the Kanto plain on which it lies, but peters out in northern Honshu.