Japan (Japanese: 日本, Nihon or Nippon) is an East Asian island country located in the Pacific Ocean, east of China and Korea, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea in the south. It is composed of over 3,000 islands, the largest of which are Hokkaidō, Honshū, Shikoku, and Kyūshū. Most of Japan's islands are mountainous, and many are volcanic; the highest peak is Mount Fuji.

The written history of Japan begins with brief appearances in Chinese history texts from the first century CE. However, archaeological research indicates that people were living on the islands of Japan as early as the upper paleolithic period. Japanese history has had alternating periods of long isolation punctuated by radical, sometimes revolutionary, influence from the outside world. Its culture today is a mixture of such outside influences and traditional culture.

Japan has the world's second largest economy, one of the world's leading industrialized nations and is member of the G8, G4, APEC nations and a major economic global power as sixth largest exporter and importer. It is a unitary constitutional monarchy with an emperor and an elected parliament, called the Diet, which is one of the oldest legislative bodies in Asia. Despite its rugged terrain, Japan is one of the most populous and most densely populated countries in the world. Greater Tokyo, with over 30 million residents, is the largest metropolitan area in the world.

The characters that make up Japan's name literally mean "Land of the Rising Sun", a name that comes from the country's eastward position relative to China.