Japan

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Country Name

Japan.

Location

Japan is an island country located in East Asia in the northwest Pacific Ocean. It borders the Sea of Japan to the west and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south.

Capital

Tokyo.

Reason Of Naming

The name for Japan in Japanese is written using the kanji and pronounced Nippon or Nihon.

Before it was adopted in the early 8th century, the country was known in China as Wa (倭) and in Japan by the endonym Yamato. The characters 日本 mean "sun origin", in reference to Japan's relatively eastern location.

The name Japan is based on Chinese pronunciation and was introduced to European languages through early trade. In the 13th century, Marco Polo recorded the early Mandarin or Wu Chinese pronunciation of the characters 日本國 as Cipangu.

The old Malay name for Japan, Japang or Japun, was borrowed from a southern coastal Chinese dialect and encountered by Portuguese traders in Southeast Asia, who brought the word to Europe in the early 16th century. The first version of the name in English appears in a book published in 1577, which spelled the name as Giapan in a translation of a 1565 Portuguese letter.

Flag

The Flag of Japan was adopted on February 27, 1870. The last change to the current Japanese flag design was on August 13, 1999, The flag is known as the "flag of the sun".

The flag consists of a white background with a red circle in the middle

of the flag.

The white color is a symbol of the integrity and honesty of the people,

the red sun disc is a representation of Amaterasu, the sun goddess.

Flag Facts

-The flag of Japan, the flag of Bangladesh & the Flag of Palau are similar in design, while there is no direct relationship between the flags, there are indirect similarities. Both flags have a big red dot in the center of the flag, but the main difference is that the Japanese flag is a white rectangular flag whereas the flag of Bangladesh features a green field. this Circle represents the sun in the Japanese flag & Bangladesh flag while the flag of Palau represents the moon.

Language

Japanese is the official language in Japan, 99% of the population speaks Japanese as their first language. Japanese writing uses kanji (Chinese characters) and two sets of kana (syllabaries based on a cursive script and radical kanji), as well as the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals Public and private schools generally require students to take Japanese language classes as well as English language courses.

Besides Japanese, the Ryukyuan languages (Amami, Kunigami, Okinawan, Miyako, Yaeyama, Yonaguni), also part of the Japonic language family, are spoken in the Ryukyu Islands chain.

The Okinawan Japanese dialect is also spoken in the region.

Religion