Japan: Century 21 - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 338

Chapter 12

Japan: Century 21

“Our greatest glory is not in never
falling but in rising every time we fall.”

C ONFUCIUS ( CA 551-479 BC )

Rich, highly urbanized, densely populated, and one of T Tokyo and Y okohama, the Nobi Plain around Nagoya,

and the Yamato Plain around Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe.
Needless to say , these areas are very densely populated
(Figure 12-1).
As a result of its midlatitude location and the fact
that it is surrounded by water, Japan is very humid with
a humid continental climate in the north and a humid
subtropical climate in the south. Japan is also affected by
the monsoon. In summer, warm monsoonal winds from
the south bring heavy rainfall and, frequently , typhoons.
In winter, cold winds from the northwest carry heavy
snows to the Sea of Japan coast and the north. An impor-
tant dividing line is the 37 o line of latitude, which marks
the northern limit of double-cropping of rice.
Four main islands dominate the Japanese archipelago:
Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku. These and
hundreds of smaller islands lie at the junction of three
tectonic plates: the Pacific, Philippine, and Eurasian
(Figure 11-2). The Pacific Plate dips between the Eurasian
and Philippine plates in the Japan trench north of
T Tokyo. The Philippine Plate is being consumed by the
Eurasian Plate in the Nankai trench south of Kyushu and
Shikoku. The Pacific Plate drops at a rate of 2.9 inches
(7.5 cm) a year.
Japan is the most seismically active country in the
world. Such instability results in many earthquakes. In
T Tokyo, there is an average of three noticeable quakes
every month. In 1923 an earthquake registering 8.3 on
the Richter scale devastated T Tokyo and the Kanto Plain
around it. Cooking stoves set fire to the mostly wooden
and paper structures. The quake, the fires, and a 36-foot
(10.8 m) tsunami claimed 140,000 lives. This was
known as the Great Kanto Quake.

the world' is largest users of natural resources, Japan is
Asia' s leading tiger. The T okyo-Y okohamaKawasaki
urban area is the largest metropolitan region on Earth.
Japan consumes the products of more tropical forests
than any other nation, a reminder that Japan is virtually
devoid of natural resources to exploit.

Dynamic Archipelago

Having achieved full status as an economic tiger, Japan is
reckoning with problems facing all developed economies
in the twenty-first century . It has been eclipsed by China
for its position as the world' s second largest economy
after the United States. How did Japan reach its pinnacle
of economic development? What has gone awry , and
how is this affecting economic structure and spatial
organization? And what social changes are occurring in
the context of economic transformation?
Most Japanese live on 3 percent of the country' s land
area. Japan' s physical landscape comprises mountains
thrust up from the Pacific Ocean. Only 25 percent of the
land area has level-to-moderate slopes, while 75 percent
consists of hills and mountains too steep to be easily cul-
tivated or settled. Consequently , the Japanese are densely
crowded on very limited lowland.
Landforms show evidence of tectonic uplift with
coastal terraces, and glaciation with ice-carved features
in the Japanese Alps. In many places, the mountains de-
scend directly into the sea. Plains are restricted to narrow
river floodplains and deltas. The most extensive plains
on the main island of Honshu are the Kanto Plain around

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