Chapter 1 Land and Climate

1. Land
2. Climate

PDF Download (PDF:681KB) 

Mt. Fuji, viewed from Oishi Park in the town of Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture. The prettiest season there is between mid-June and mid-July, when the scenery abounds with lavender. Mt. Fuji stands 3,776 meters above sea level.

 

1. Land

Japan is an island nation situated off the eastern seaboard of the Eurasian continent in the northern hemisphere. The islands form a crescent-shaped archipelago stretching from northeast to southwest parallel to the continental coastline with the Sea of Japan in between. The country is located between approximately 20 degrees to 45 degrees north latitude and stretches over 3,200 kilometers. It consists of the main islands of Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu and Okinawa, and more than 6,800 smaller islands of varying sizes. Its surface area totals approximately 380,000 square kilometers, a figure equivalent to 0.3 percent of the global land mass.

Since the Japanese archipelago is located in a zone of relatively young tectonic plate movement, it is particularly prone to various physiographical phenomena. The land is full of undulations, with mountainous regions including hilly terrain accounting for about three-quarters of its total area. The mountains are generally steep and are intricately carved out by ravines. Hilly terrain extends between the mountainous regions and the plains.

 

 

 

Forests account for the largest portion of the nation's surface area. There are approximately 250,000 square kilometers (which equates to 66.4 percent of the nation's surface area) of forests, followed by approximately 50,000 square kilometers of farmland (12.6 percent). Together, forests and farmland thus cover approximately 80 percent of the nation. There are approximately 20,000 square kilometers of building land (4.9 percent).

 

 

2. Climate

The Japanese archipelago has a temperate marine climate, with four distinct seasons, an annual average temperature of between 10 to 20 degrees centigrade, and annual precipitation of 1,000 to 2,500 millimeters. Japan typically experiences hot, humid summers and cold, dry winters. The topography of Honshu, however, features a series of major mountain ranges running from north to south. Because of this feature, the northwest monsoon in the winter brings humid conditions with heavy precipitation (snow) to Honshu's Japan Sea side but comparatively dry weather with low precipitation to the Pacific Ocean side. In summer, the winds blow mainly from the southeast, giving rise to hot and humid weather. Another unique characteristic of Japan's climate is that it has two long spells of rainy seasons, one in early summer when southeast monsoon begins to blow, and the other in autumn when the winds cease. From summer to autumn, tropical cyclones generated in the tropical seas develop into typhoons and hit Japan, sometimes causing storm and flood damage.