Japan

Japanese tradition dates the imperial line to 660 BC, and the current emperor is counted as the 126th. Classical court culture flowered at Nara and then Heian-kyō (Kyoto), which remained the imperial seat for over a thousand years. From the twelfth century, real power lay with warrior clans and their shogun, culminating in the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1868), which unified the country and then sealed it off from almost all foreign contact for roughly 250 years.

American warships forced Japan open in 1853. The 1868 Meiji Restoration abolished the shogunate, restored the emperor as a symbol, and drove a rapid modernisation that turned Japan into an industrial and military power: it defeated China in 1895 and Russia in 1905 and colonised Korea and Taiwan. In the 1930s and 1940s it waged a brutal war of expansion across Asia and the Pacific, which ended with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and surrender in 1945.

Under US-led occupation, Japan adopted a pacifist constitution and a parliamentary democracy, with the emperor purely ceremonial. The post-war "economic miracle" made it the world's second-largest economy by the 1970s — Toyota, Sony, Panasonic — until an asset bubble burst around 1990, beginning the "Lost Decades" of low growth. Today's central challenges are a shrinking, ageing population, a tight labour market, and a more assertive China.

Shinto, an Indigenous tradition of kami (spirits) and shrines, coexists with Buddhism, and most Japanese take part in both — a shrine visit at New Year, a Buddhist funeral — without seeing a contradiction. Aesthetic ideals of simplicity, seasonality, and impermanence run through the tea ceremony, gardens, ikebana, calligraphy, haiku, and the theatre forms noh and kabuki; sumo is the traditional national sport.

Social norms prize politeness, group harmony, indirectness, punctuality (trains to the second), cleanliness, and not imposing on others. Bowing, removing shoes indoors, keeping quiet on trains, and not tipping are all expected, and small breaches by visitors are usually forgiven with a smile.

Contemporary Japanese culture — manga, anime, video games, J-pop, fashion, and a globally influential design and food sensibility — is a major export, existing alongside a famously demanding work culture of long hours.

Japan's roughly 124 million people are heavily concentrated in cities along the Pacific coast of Honshu, above all in Greater Tokyo, the world's largest metropolitan area at some 37 million. Osaka–Kobe–Kyoto, Nagoya, Fukuoka, and Sapporo anchor the other regions, while rural and mountainous areas are steadily losing population, leaving abandoned houses and closing schools.

The economy is large and advanced — cars, precision manufacturing, robotics, electronics, and a growing services sector — but has grown slowly for decades, and demographic decline is the defining long-term issue. The Liberal Democratic Party has governed almost continuously since 1955.

Daily life is orderly and efficient: the packed commuter train, the convenience store for everything from meals to bill payments, the after-work izakaya, the neighbourhood bathhouse or hot spring, and a calendar of seasonal festivals (matsuri) and observances.

Japanese cuisine (washoku) is on UNESCO's heritage list and is built on rice, seafood, soy (miso, soy sauce, tofu), dashi stock, and seasonal vegetables, prepared to bring out rather than mask natural flavour. Beyond sushi and sashimi, the everyday range is huge: ramen in dozens of regional styles, udon and soba, tempura, tonkatsu, yakitori, okonomiyaki, curry rice, and the small-plate grazing of an izakaya.

At the refined end, kaiseki is a multi-course seasonal meal of great precision; at the humble end, a convenience-store rice ball or a station bento is genuinely good. Regional specialities — Osaka's street food, Hokkaido's seafood and dairy, Kyoto's tofu and pickles, Fukuoka's tonkotsu ramen — reward travelling with an appetite.

Sake, shōchū, Japanese whisky (world-class), and green tea (sencha, matcha, roasted hōjicha) are the drinks. Meals often end with fruit or a small sweet rather than a rich dessert, and the wagashi confections served with tea are an art of their own.

Tokyo mixes the ultra-modern — Shibuya's scramble crossing, Shinjuku's neon, teamLab's digital art — with the traditional: Asakusa's Sensō-ji temple, the Meiji Shrine in its forest, and the Imperial Palace gardens, plus day trips to the shrines of Nikkō and the Great Buddha of Kamakura. Kyoto is the cultural counterweight, with the vermilion torii tunnels of Fushimi Inari, the Golden Pavilion, the Arashiyama bamboo grove, the geisha district of Gion, and dozens of temples and gardens; nearby Nara has its great bronze Buddha and free-roaming deer.

Mount Fuji and the Fuji Five Lakes, the hot-spring resorts of Hakone, and the Japanese Alps and the thatched villages of Shirakawa-gō are within easy reach of the "Golden Route." Hiroshima's Peace Memorial and the "floating" torii of Miyajima form a sober, essential stop, and Osaka is the country's kitchen and nightlife capital.

Further afield: Kanazawa's samurai and geisha quarters and its celebrated garden; the Kii Peninsula's Kumano Kodō pilgrimage trails and the temple lodgings of Kōya-san; Hokkaido for nature, the powder skiing of Niseko, and the Sapporo Snow Festival; and the subtropical beaches and distinct Ryūkyū culture of Okinawa. The seasons themselves — cherry blossom in spring, maple leaves in autumn — are half the reason people come.