Japan
Contents
Introduction
Japan (Japanese: 日本, [ɲihoɴ] ⓘ, Nippon or Nihon, and formally 日本国, Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku) is an island country in East Asia. It is in the northwest Pacific Ocean and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans an archipelago of 14,125 islands, with the five main islands being Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Tokyo is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto.
Japan has over 125 million inhabitants and is the 11th most populous country in the world, as well as one of the most densely populated. About three-fourths of the country's terrain is mountainous, concentrating its highly urbanized population on narrow coastal plains. Japan is divided into 47 administrative prefectures and eight traditional regions. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world. Japan has the world's highest life expectancy, though it is experiencing a population decline due to its very low birth rate.
Japan has been inhabited since the Upper Paleolithic period (30,000 BC). Between the fourth and ninth centuries, the kingdoms of Japan became unified under an emperor and the imperial court based in Heian-kyō. Beginning in the 12th century, political power was held by a series of military dictators (shōgun) and feudal lords (daimyō), and enforced by a class of warrior nobility (samurai). After a century-long period of civil war, the country was reunified in 1603 under the Tokugawa shogunate, which enacted an isolationist foreign policy. In 1854, a United States fleet forced Japan to open trade to the West, which led to the end of the shogunate and the restoration of imperial power in 1868. In the Meiji period, the Empire of Japan adopted a Western-modeled constitution and pursued a program of industrialization and modernization. Amidst a rise in militarism and overseas colonization, Japan invaded China in 1937 and entered World War II as an Axis power in 1941. After suffering defeat in the Pacific War and two atomic bombings, Japan surrendered in 1945 and came under a seven-year Allied occupation, during which it adopted a new constitution.
Under the 1947 constitution, Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature, the National Diet. Japan is a developed country and a great power, with one of the largest economies by nominal GDP. Japan has renounced its right to declare war, though it maintains a Self-Defense Force that ranks as one of the world's strongest militaries. A global leader in the automotive, robotics, and electronics industries, the country has made significant contributions to science and technology, and is one of the world's largest exporters and importers. It is part of multiple major international and intergovernmental institutions.
Japan is considered a cultural superpower as the culture of Japan is well known around the world, including its art, cuisine, film, music, and popular culture, which encompasses prominent manga, anime, and video game industries.
Capital City
- Tokyo -- Capital of Japan
Intelligence Agencies
- Cabinet Secretariat
- Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office (CIRO)
- Ministry of Defense
- Defense Intelligence Headquarters (DIH)
- Ministry of Justice
- Public Security Intelligence Agency (PSIA)
Military
Supernaturals
Yōkai
Yōkai (妖怪, "strange apparition") are a class of supernatural entities and spirits in Japanese folklore. The word yōkai is composed of two kanji characters which both mean "suspicious, doubtful" and while it may be regarded as a loanword from the Chinese term yaoguai, the word yōkai has taken on multiple different meanings peculiar in Japanese context.
Yōkai are also referred to as ayakashi (あやかし), mononoke (物の怪) or mamono (魔物). Despite often being translated as such, yōkai are not literally demons in the Western sense of the word, but are instead spirits and entities, and they can be viewed as kami, although this comparison is more often applied to actively "antagonistic" yōkai. Their behavior can range from malevolent or mischievous to benevolent to humans.
Yōkai often have animal like features (such as the kappa, depicted as appearing similar to a turtle, and the tengu, commonly depicted with wings), but may also appear humanoid in appearance, such as the kuchisake-onna. Some yōkai resemble inanimate objects (such as the tsukumogami), while others have no discernible shape. Yōkai are typically described as having spiritual or supernatural abilities, with shapeshifting being the most common trait associated with them. Yōkai that shapeshift are known as bakemono (化け物) or obake (お化け).
Japanese folklorists and historians explain yōkai as personifications of "supernatural or unaccountable phenomena to their informants". In the Edo period, many artists, such as Toriyama Sekien, invented new yōkai by taking inspiration from folk tales or purely from their own imagination. Today, several such yōkai (such as the amikiri) are mistakenly thought to originate in more traditional folklore.
Concept
The concept of yōkai, their causes and phenomena related to them varies greatly throughout Japanese culture and historical periods; typically, the older the time period, the higher the number of phenomena deemed to be supernatural and the result of yōkai. According to Japanese ideas of animism, spirit-like entities were believed to reside in all things, including natural phenomena and objects. Such spirits possessed emotions and personalities: peaceful spirits were known as nigi-mitama, who brought good fortune; violent spirits, known as ara-mitama, brought ill fortune, such as illness and natural disasters. Neither type of spirit was considered to be yōkai.
One's ancestors and particularly respected departed elders could also be deemed to be nigi-mitama, accruing status as protective spirits who brought fortune to those who worshipped them. Animals, objects and natural features or phenomena were also venerated as nigi-mitama or propitiated as ara-mitama depending on the area.
Despite the existence of harmful spirits, rituals for converting ara-mitama into nigi-mitama were performed, aiming to quell maleficent spirits, prevent misfortune and alleviate the fear arising from phenomena and events that otherwise had no explanation. The ritual for converting ara-mitama into nigi-mitama was known as the chinkon (鎮魂, lit. 'the calming of the spirits' or 'reqiuem'). Chinkon rituals for ara-mitama that failed to achieve deification as benevolent spirits, whether through a lack of sufficient veneration or through losing worshippers and thus their divinity, became yōkai.
Over time, phenomena and events thought to be supernatural became fewer and fewer, with the depictions of yōkai in picture scrolls and paintings beginning to standardize, evolving more into caricatures than fearsome spiritual entities. Elements of the tales and legends surrounding yōkai began to be depicted in public entertainment, beginning as early as the Middle Ages in Japan. – During and following the Edo period, the mythology and lore of yōkai became more defined and formalized.
Type
The folklorist Tsutomu Ema studied the literature and paintings depicting yōkai and henge (変化, lit. 'changed things/mutants'), dividing them into categories as presented in the Nihon Yōkai Henge Shi and the Obake no Rekishi:
- Categories based on a yōkai's "true form":
- Human
- Animal
- Plant
- Object
- Natural phenomenon
- Categories depending on the source of mutation:
- Mutation related to this world
- Spiritual or mentally related mutation
- Reincarnation or afterworld related mutation
- Material related mutation
- Categories based on external appearance:
- Human
- Animal
- Plant
- Artifact
- Structure or building
- Natural object or phenomenon
- Miscellaneous or appearance compounding more than one category
In other folklorist categorizations, yōkai are classified, similarly to the nymphs of Greek mythology, by their location or the phenomena associated with their manifestation. Yōkai are indexed in the book 綜合日本民俗語彙 ("A Complete Dictionary of Japanese Folklore", Sogo Nihon Minzoku Goi)[15][a] as follows:
- Yama no ke (山の怪) (mountains)
- michi no ke (paths)
- ki no ke (trees)
- mizu no ke (water)
- umi no ke (the sea)
- yuki no ke (snow)
- oto no ke (sound)
- dōbutsu no ke (animals, either real or imaginary): Kaibyō
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%8Dkai
