The lead=yes is an archipelago of 14,125 islands that form the country of Japan.
Japan is the largest island country in East Asia and the fourth-largest island country in the world with .
Terminology
The term "
Mainland Japan" is used to distinguish the large islands of the Japanese archipelago from the remote, smaller islands; it refers to the main islands of
Hokkaido,
Honshu,
Kyushu, and
Shikoku.
From 1943 until the end of the
Pacific War, Karafuto Prefecture (south
Sakhalin) was designated part of the mainland. Geographically speaking the term "mainland" is somewhat inaccurate, as this refers to an expanse of territory that is attached to a continental landmass.
The term "home islands" was an exonym used at the end of World War II to define the area where Japanese sovereignty and constitutional rule of its emperor would be restricted. The term is also commonly used today to distinguish the archipelago from Japan's colonies and other territories.[Milton W. Meyer, Japan: A Concise History, fourth ed. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012, , p. 2 .]
Palaeogeography
Geography
The archipelago consists of 14,125 islands
(here defined as land more than 100 m in circumference), of which 430 are inhabited.
The five main islands, from north to south, are
Hokkaido,
Honshu,
Shikoku,
Kyushu, and
Okinawa Island.
Honshu is the largest and is referred to as the
Mainland Japan.
[ "Japanese Archipelago" , TheFreeDictionary.com, retrieved 24 June 2013.]
The topography is divided as:
-
Hokkaido, Honshu, and Shikoku and its surrounding islands;
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Kyushu and the Ryukyu arc, which is composed of the Ryukyu Islands and other surrounding islands;
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Eastern part of Hokkaido and the Kuril Islands;
-
Nanpō Islands and the Izu Peninsula (part of Izu-Bonin-Mariana Arc).
Image gallery
See also
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Japan in the Paleolithic
-
List of extreme points of Japan
-
List of islands of Japan
