5. Jeography of Japan: The Land and its description, climate.

The Japanese, like all other peoples, have been shaped in large part by the land in which they live. Its location, climate, and natural endowments are unchangeable facts that have set limits to their development and helped to give it specific direction.

Most people think of Japan as a small country. Even the Japanese have this idea firmly in mind. And small it is if seen on a world map. It is certainly dwarfed by its near neighbors, China and Russia, and by the two North American co’lossi , the United States and Canada, which face it across the Pacific. But size is a relative matter. Japan would look far different if compared with the lands of Western Europe. It is less revealing to say that Japan is smaller than California or could be lost in a Siberian province than to point out that it is consid­erably larger than Italy and half against the size of the United Kingdom.

But a more meaningful measure of a nation's size is population.

The division of the country into many small units of ter’rain underlay the division of the land in an’tiquity into a number of autonomous petty "countries," which became institutionalized by the eighth century as the traditional sixty-eight provinces of Japan. Nowadays the country is divided into forty-seven prefectures.

Despite the natural division of the country, however, unity and ‘homoge’neity characterize the Japanese. As early as the seventh century, the Japanese saw themselves as a single people, living in a unified nation. Today few if any large masses of people are as homogeneous as the Japanese.

Until the building of railroads and paved highways in modern times, communication by land within the country was difficult. But sea transport has always been relatively easy around all the coasts.

Agricultural people everywhere have developed a close attachment to the soil that has nourished them, but among the Japanese there is in addition to this universal feeling a particularly strong awareness of the beauties of nature.

In addition to peerless (бесподобный) Fuji, there are the famous "three landscapes of Ja­pan" (Nihon sankei)—Miyajima, a temple island in the Inland Sea near Hiroshima; Ama-no-hashidate, or "Bridge of Heaven," a pine-covered sands pit on the Japan Sea coast north of Kyoto; and Matsushima, a cluster of picturesque pine-clad islands in a bay near the city of Sendai, in northern Japan.

Unlike the vastness of the untamed American West, the scale of Ja­pan's natural beauty is for the most part small and intimate. The chief exceptions to the smallness of scale in Japan's landscape are the high mountains of central Japan and the long vistas (аллея, просека) of the northern island of Hokkaido.

Japan's dense population and phenomenal agricultural production can in part be explained by the climate, which contrasts quite sharply with that of Europe. Whereas European agriculture is limited by summers that are overly dry in the south and too cool in the north, Japan has both hot summer weather and ample (изобильный) rainfall, which comes for the most part during the growing season from early spring to early autumn. This has permitted a much more intensive form of agriculture than in Europe, with consequently heavier agricultural populations.

The climate of Japan resembles that of the east coast of North America more than that of Europe, largely as a result of the similar relation­ship among land masses, oceans, and prevailing winds.

Thus, summer and winter can be unpleasant in Japan, but they are not extreme and are relatively brief. The remaining eight months of the year are very pleasant. The four seasons are clearly differentiated, and the progression of temperature changes is slow and quite regular, unlike that in most of the United States.

Typhoons, however, strike Japan with somewhat greater frequency and usually with more destructiveness to life and property, since the greater part of the Japanese population is concentrated on the southeastern seacoast, where the typhoons first come ashore.

Typhoons have accustomed the Japanese to expect natural catastrophes and to accept them with stoic resilience. This sort of fatalism might even be called the "typhoon mentality," but it has been fostered by other natural disasters as well. Volcanic eruptions sometimes occur, since Japan has many active volcanoes that are part of the great volcanic chain that encircles the Pacific Ocean. The largest active volcano, Asama-yama, devastated hundreds of square miles of central Honshu in 1783.

Japan is generally a rainy country with high humidity. Because of its wide range of latitude, Japan has a variety of climates, with a range often compared to that of the east coast of North America, from Nova Scotia to Georgia. Tokyo is at about 36 north latitude, comparable to that of Tehran, Athens, or Los Angeles. The generally humid, temperate climate exhibits marked seasonal variation celebrated in art and literature, as well as regional variations ranging from cool in Hokkaido to subtropical in Kyushu. Climate also varies with altitude and with location on the Pacific Ocean or on the Sea of Japan. Northern Japan has warm summers but long, cold winters with heavy snow. Central Japan has hot, humid summers and short winters, and southwestern Japan has long, hot, humid summers and mild winters.

Two primary factors influence Japan's climate: a location near the Asian continent and the existence of major oceanic currents. The climate from June to September is marked by hot, wet weather brought by tropical airflows from the Pacific Ocean and Southeast Asia. These airflows are full of moisture and deposit substantial amounts of rain when they reach land. There is a marked rainy season, beginning in early June and continuing for about a month. It is followed by hot, sticky weather. Five or six typhoons pass over or near Japan every year from early August to early September, sometimes resulting in significant damage. Annual precipitation, which averages between 100 and 200 centimeters, is concentrated in the period between June and September. In fact, 70 to 80 percent of the annual precipitation falls during this period. In winter, a high-pressure area develops over Siberia, and a low-pressure area develops over the northern Pacific Ocean. The result is a flow of cold air eastward across Japan that brings freezing temperatures and heavy snowfalls to the central mountain ranges facing the Sea of Japan, but clear skies to areas fronting on the Pacific.

Two major ocean currents affect this climatic pattern: the warm Kuroshio Current (Black Current; also known as the Japan Current); and the cold Oyashio Current (Parent Current; also known as the Okhotsk Current). The Kuroshio Current flows northward on the Pacific side of Japan and warms areas as far north as Tokyo; a small branch, the Tsushima Current, flows up the Sea of Japan side. The Oyashio Current, which abounds in plankton beneficial to coldwater fish, flows southward along the northern Pacific, cooling adjacent coastal areas. The meeting point of these currents at 36 north latitude is a bountiful fishing ground.