The country has achieved it’s success by the imports and exports trade. Back when the war started they were devastated with the destruction of all their major businesses and money making empires but now they have come back. They started this incredible revolution back in the 1940’s after the Second World War. They had to start somewhere so they decided to go with Iron and Steel. When they had manufactured it, they sent it all around the globe and for a huge profit. After this, they needed something to take all of this produce around the world so they could go even further afield. Their answer to this was to build transport ships. When people started to get richer, Japan started up companies like Mitsubishi, Toyota and Kawasaki to bring motor vehicles to the rest of the world and finally up came companies like Panasonic (Matsushita Electronics), JVC, Sony and Matsui to bring to electrical goods to the well developed countries. Very recently companies have spread their roots to tackle smaller products such as mobile phones. Trium and Nokia are to name a few. This has got Japans economy back and now they are richer than ever!
Japan now gets it’s money by exporting the above goods. Below are the figures to show this:
Japan exports 17.6% of it’s motor vehicles, 7% of it’d office machinery, 5.4% of it’s Iron and Steel and 5.4% of it’s chemicals. Over the page is a pie chart to show this data.
Japan import and export around the whole world. It is important to them and their economy. If it wasn’t for the other developed, well off countries, Japan wouldn’t be as rich as they are today. To show just where they import their goods from, I have listed the figures below:
Japan imports 10% of it’s goods from the E.U, 8% from the Middle East, 30% from Asia, 6% from China, 6% from Indonesia, 5% from Hong Kong, 4% from Taiwan, 5% from Australia, 26% from North America, 23% from the U.S.A and 21% from other countries.
Japan then takes these raw materials and converts them into the hi-tech products we have right in our very own homes. After it has done this, it exports them all around the world and gets lots of money from it. The export figures from Japan are listed below:
Japan exports 15% of it’s products to the E.U, 33% to Asia, 6% to South Korea, 6% to Taiwan, 5% to Hong Kong, 5% to Singapore, 3% to China, 2% to Australia, 31% to North America, 29% to the U.S.A, 6.5% to Germany, 3.5% to the U.K and 19% to the worlds other countries. These figures are shown on a pie chart over the page.
Japans capital city is called Tokyo. Tokyo has over twelve million people living in it so it is very overcrowded and it is tight for space. Tokyo also has an amazing thirty two million people living in a fifty kilometre radius around it. Tokyo has grown so quickly it has attached itself to other regions and cities so they run into one another. The reason why this massive city has become what it has today is because of it’s important natural advantages. Tokyo has the space to house giant, important government buildings and has a large harbour which can hold hundreds of ships but it has a small opening which offers protection against a really bad storm or incoming typhoon. The city is also home to much of the countries nightlife with it’s bright neon lights and big screens which bring the skyline to life at night. Tokyo also offers some of the best technology and contributes greatly to Japans income.
Japans currency is the Yen. It is represented by the symbol. Japan has a GDP of 23 352 US$ and a GNP of 34 630 US$.
The country speaks Japanese but some people can speak different languages (English is an example). The alphabet consists of around forty different symbols or letters as we know them.
Japan has a GNP or Gross National Product of 34 630 US$ (figures for 1994). Basically this means that the country makes 34 630$ a year. This has grown over the past seven years and Japan is now one of the worlds wealthiest countries, topping the USA by quite a lot! This is an amazing achievement for any country considering what Japan has had to go through and what it has done in the past sixty years to turn around the horrible devastation that they suffered in the Second World War.
Japan has many famous companies and brands. The names like Nokia, Panasonic and Sony have all become musts and the phrase “Made In Japan” is essential to any piece of high tech equipment. Japanese technology is very expensive but the phrase you get what you pay for really counts here. Japan don’t just concentrate on the electronics world though, They make cars. Manufacturers like Nissan, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Subaru and Suzuki have all made their mark in the British motoring industry. They also provide us with food and crops which we eat every day.
Japan has an extremely high life expectancy. This has to do with what they eat and how they look after themselves. They all eat a diet of fresh fish because that is what is really easy to catch especially with them being where they are in the world. This is not only easy for the Japanese, it is good for them too. They have a steady rate of death rate but their Birth and population rates are soaring. The Japanese also have good health care and doctors so their rate of infant mortality is extremely low too. This is a good sign for the Japanese but the overcrowding is only going to get worse until they eventually run out of space…
Japan is a really rich and well off country and there is no doubt about that. But where did it all begin and how did it all happen?
Well, it started right back after the Second World War and the country had been virtually wiped out. Now, they had to get some money from somewhere and the only real place to do this was to start to go into the Iron and Steel business. When they started this they got orders from all around the world.
Because they were becoming inundated with all these orders they knew that they would have to go into another phase of development and start to build big ships to transport all their raw materials into the country and all their products out. To do this they decided to go into the shipbuilding industry.
When the people of the world started to get richer by the 1970’s, Japan and other countries decided to help fund the growth of the transport industry. This meant that as people could afford cars of their own, they would pop down to their local Toyota dealer and go and test drive a brand new car. This was back in the 1970’s when the motor industry was just starting to take off.
Now people are more rich than they have ever been so the Japanese have decided to go into the High Tech industry. Not only do they sell their technology to the world but they also use it to manufacture and produce things for themselves. These four stages of development have made the country what it is today.
Japan has a very hilly relief. The hills may not be that high but they are extremely steep. This makes them impossible to work with. However, the Japanese are levelling these hills out and flattening them. The left over rubble is dumped into the sea to make little islands to home people. The now flat land is then built upon too but not with houses. The Japanese are now trying to make special high tech farms. They are bringing their technology together to provide the perfect conditions for growing anything. The new farms are controlled by sensors and computers, if there is a problem, the computers will put it right. The crops are perfect when they are ready to be harvested. However, not all farms are now high tech. They still have traditional family run farms but even they are starting to catch on to the new high tech wave. Specially developed machinery like mini tractors and harvesters can be used to care for the crops when they have fully grown. The farms are so small that they can fit all their produce onto the back of a very small van. They don’t make much money either so the other people who inherit the farms usually sell them off. After this they go to work for the big companies and go to live in the large and overpopulated cities. Farming is starting to die off in Japan for one very big reason. There are cheaper imports from abroad. Maybe this is the final nail in the coffin for Japanese farming.
Japan has hardly any energy and the figures are on the second page. This means that Japan has to find other sources of energy. They have turned to big nuclear power stations all clumped together in very remote places with the odd village here and there. The people of these villages were not happy about this so the Japanese government promised to improve the facilities of these towns and cities. The locals have agreed to this and sure enough, the government kept their promise too. But there is a really big nuclear power station for Tokyo and Kobe just a few yards up the road. The locals believe that these things are dangerous, that’s why they won’t build them anywhere else because you are at a severe risk twenty four hours a day. There is no doubt that these places are dangerous. This is why the government won’t build these things in the middle of all these big cities. Japan is planning to build a total of fifty two new nuclear power stations for the country. What they don’t seem to realise that this is a major danger to the whole of the island. If there was to be a leak, then the lives of hundreds if not thousands of people would be at stake. However, the rulers of Japan don’t seem to care about this. They don’t think that these are issues because there is a really strict code of conduct in place. But this didn’t stop accidents in the past. There have been many problems with nuclear reactors in the past. This is a very dangerous substance and no guidelines can stop it going wrong. But if this solves their energy problem and that they make sure that absolutely nothing happens then I guess they will do anything to stop this ongoing energy crisis for good.
Japan is a country facing many problems with natural disasters. There are eighteen active volcanoes in the country and any of them could go off at any time. But it isn’t just volcanoes that the Japanese have problems with. They have to deal with at least thirty major storms a year and earthquakes like the ones which wrecked Kobe could happen at any time. This is why they are having to develop earthquake proof buildings and bridges to stop the complete devastation of these structures in such severe conditions. But the Japanese believe that the storms are gifts from god and they also believe that they are good for and help them. Typhoons create large streams on fields which help grow rice and the Japanese think that this is brilliant. What strange people!
Japan is made up of over one thousand islands with the four major ones being inter linked with a so called “spine” or a bullet train which travels extremely quickly across all the islands. The country as a whole has a total surface area of 377,750 sq. km. (145,850) sq. MI. This is very big indeed.
After World War Two, many countries funded the growth of Japanese industry and technology. In the 1950’s the Americans signed a pact with Japan and sealed their friendships. A few years later the USSR did the same thing. Then these countries started to fund the growth of industries and together they have made Japan what it is today. A very big and not forgetting rich country with the best technology the world has ever seen. They have remained world renowned for their growth and industry ever since. They have managed to turn around this massive disadvantage and now they are the richest country in the world. Now when you think about it. The Second World War wasn’t that long ago so they have done extremely well to do what they have done in a very short space of time.
All of the above things have contributed to the development and use of new technology from the fancy high tech farms to the automated production lines at Panasonic and Sony. The high tech phase only really started in the 1990’s. This is when it really began to take off. This was where people could afford these things and wanted their mobile phones and massive television sets. If it wasn’t for this, Japan wouldn’t really have a market to sell their products. Industry has changed all around the world. If it wasn’t for these developed countries Japan wouldn’t have all the necessary components to make their products, it was really a team effort, Japan didn’t do it all on their own.
Living in modern day Japan has a hectic daily schedule. In Urban Japan you have all the Triple Decker roads and the thousands of commuters which make their way to work by bus, car or train every single day. When you get to work, you will have all your high tech phones and computers and not much else is different when you get home. It will be the same stop-start traffic as on the way there and when you finally get home you will have the house to sort out. The Japanese businessmen don’t really get a lot of time to themselves whereas in rural Japan you have the piece and tranquillity of the mountains and countryside. You will have your small farm to tend to and you have to pop down to the local market and sell your produce once every so often and the rest of your time is your own. Even though you would not be in the middle of all the action and you wouldn’t earn as much money, it wouldn’t really matter as long as you had time to spend with your family and friends. The stress would be less too although the end of farming would be a very big worry.
Both jobs and types of lifestyle will need some amount of coping with but you will feel better doing the rural jobs like farming and selling your crops. There is less stress and you get more time to yourself. If I lived in modern day Japan I think I would choose the Urban Lifestyle because I would enjoy being in the middle of all the action and you would get a decent wage.
Japan will have many problems to deal with in the future. Many of which are problems today. Overcrowding will be a big thing for the Japanese to overcome. They will have to reclaim land that has been taken by the sea and have to flatten more hills and mountains to build more man-made islands in the ocean. How Japan is going to completely deal with this problem I don’t know. It seems that there will be no end and that this problem will be around forever.
Because Japan has so much traffic going up and down it’s highways it has a major pollution problem. Japan is an automotive dustbin and it still makes cars which the British Isles saw in the 1970’s. The culprits go by the name of Mitsubishi. They also have big nuclear power plants which churn out quite a lot of rubbish as well. This is another major problem as they will have to cut down on the emissions which they are putting out at the moment.
Competition from other countries is going to be a big thing in the future. Many countries can export things to Japan for a much cheaper price than the actual country can. There are also other big electronics and high tech firms which could challenge Japans technological supremacy. Competition from other countries is sometimes called NIC’s for short.
Japan is also going to have a major transport problem. How long can the current system hold out because the population of Japan is only going to grow not diminish. Soon they will have to have more than one bullet train and they are going to have to replace their three tier roads with four and five tier roads. This is going to cause even more of a problem than there is now. The more people there are, the more people are going to have more cars and that means more pollution unless the Japanese think of some way to change all this.
Japan is going to face more problems and that is a fact. The high tech industry isn’t always going to exist. There will be a massive market change so they will have to find something else to do. People aren’t always going to be queuing miles down the road for the release of the latest games console or the latest mobile phone which everybody wants. Things are going to change and it could happen at any time at all.
Countries are going to face economic problems. Japan aren’t always going to be as rich as they are now. When people stop buying their products and the market dies, so will their economy. If Japan are going to remain where they are at the top of the financial league, they will have to be one step ahead of their competitors just like they are now. If someone gets ahead of Japan however, it could spell trouble for the Japanese economy.
My conclusion is simple. Japan are no doubt one of the best developed countries in the world. They deserve to be where they are but what they must realise is that they aren’t going to be so well off forever. One little change can upset the balance of their economy drastically and their competitors are going to be on to them so the pressure is greater than ever!
But, no matter how successful Japan are on the business front, their country is a mess. They have no energy, they are still looking at nuclear power, they are one of the world’s worst polluters and they face an ever growing population crisis. Japan are in a mess and there is no doubt about that either. The changes have been good for the people but not for the environment. Japan has changed a lot since they were bombed and almost wiped out after the Second World War and they have changed a lot.
Nobody knows how Japan will fare in the future. I guess we shall all have to wait and find out…