Japan (Japanese Nihon or Nippon; formally Nippon-koku , literally the State of Japan) is an island nation in East Asia.

Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters that make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin", which is why Japan is sometimes referred to as the "Land of the Rising Sun". But

How did Japan become a developed country?

What steps did Japan take to become a developed nation and be recognized as a social and economic superpower, not only in its region, but on a world scale. If not japan than any other country? =>mainly, now Japan position have been made by mechanical genre. Japan lost on WW2. But on 1960's, Japan evolved sharply. The chance was Tokyo Olympic. Because get the victory of Olympic, Japan made effort on many genre. for instance, Japan made high speed train, Shinkanse. and high-way road like Tomei Highwa between Nagoya and Tokyo, Syutokosoku high-way inner Tokyo, Kokuritsu Kyogijou Studiam.... And on those days Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, declare Syotoku Baizou Project. That meant the project that was increased Japanese salary. from 60's to 70's, Japanese challenged on all the portion including daily life, labor. the core was the passion that wish higher grade life. such passion was evolved Japanese position on the world.

Some of the structural features for Japan's economic growth developed in the Edo period, such as the network of transport routes, by road and water, and the futures contracts, banking [94] and insurance of the Osaka rice brokers. During the Meiji period from 1868, Japan [95] expanded economically with the embrace of the market economy. Many of today's enterprises were founded at the time, and Japan emerged as the most developed nation in [96] Asia. The period of overall real economic growth from the 1960s to the 1980s has been called the Japanese post-war economic miracle: it averaged 7.5 percent in the 1960s and [97] 1970s, and 3.2 percent in the 1980s and early 1990s. Growth slowed markedly in the 1990s during what the Japanese call the Lost Decade, largely because of the after-effects of the Japanese asset price bubble and domestic policies intended to wring speculative excesses from the stock and real estate markets. Government efforts to revive economic growth met with little success and were further hampered by the global slowdown in [2] 2000. The economy showed strong signs of recovery after 2005; GDP growth for that year was 2.8 percent, surpassing the growth rates of the US andEuropean Union during the same period. As of 2011, Japan is the third largest national economy in the world, after the United States [99] and China, in terms of nominal GDP, and the fourth largest national economy in the world, [7] after the United States, China and India in terms of purchasing power parity. Japan has a large industrial capacity, and is home to some of the largest and most technologically advanced producers of motor vehicles, electronics, machine tools, steel and nonferrous metals, ships, chemical substances, textiles, and processed foods. , Japan's labor force [102] consisted of some 65.9 million workers. Japan has a low unemployment rate of around four percent. Almost one in six Japanese, or 20 million people, lived in poverty in 2007.

Japan is a leading nation in scientific research, particularly technology, machinery and biomedical research. Nearly 700,000 researchers share a US$130 billion research and [114] development budget, the third largest in the world. Japan is a world leader in fundamental scientific research, having produced fifteen Nobel laureates in either physics, chemistry or [115] [116] medicine, three Fields medalists, and one Gauss Prize laureate. Japan leads the world in robotics production and use, possessing more than half of the world's industrial robots.

Electronics
Japan is well known for its automotive and electronics industries throughout the world, and Japanese electronic products account for a large share in the world market, compared to a majority of other countries. Japan is one of the leading nations in the fields of scientific research, technology, machinery and medical research with the world's third largest budget for research and development at $130 billion USD, and over 677,731 researchers. Japan has received the most science Nobel prizes in Asia . Japan has large international corporate conglomerates such as Fuji (which developed the nation's first electronic computer, FUJIC, in 1956) and Sony. Sony, Panasonic, Canon, Nikon, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Sharp, NEC, Epson and Toshiba are among the best-known electronics companies in the world.Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nintendo, Sony and Subaru are also very well known companies in the world.

Aeronautics
Japan has also made headway into aerospace research and space exploration. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) conducts space and planetary research, aviation research, and development of rockets and satellites. It also built the Japanese Experiment Module, which was launched and added to the International Space Station during Space Shuttle assembly flights in 2007 and 2008 and the HTV to transfer payloads to the station in 2009.

Nuclear power
Since 1973, nuclear energy has been a national strategic priority in Japan, as the nation is heavily dependent on imported fuel, with fuel imports accounting for 61% of energy production. In 2008, after the opening of 7 brand new nuclear reactors in Japan

Nobel Laureates
Japanese researchers have won several Nobel Prizes: the prize for physics in 1949,1965,1973. 1981 chemistry prize, and chemists took prizes in 2000 and 2001:

The Japanese robot Saya has already been used as a receptionist and secretary.

Now she is to become the worlds first robot teacher. The Professor Hiroshi Kobayashi has been developing Saya for over 15 years. A primary school in Tokyo will be the first recipients of Saya as a teacher. Saya is multilingual and will do roll call as well as set tasks from text books.
Science & Technology

SURFING IN THE RAIN

Internet Umbrella Lets Users Browse in Any Weather (October 4, 2007)

The umbrella projects images on to its underside. Pileus LLC / Keio University

Gray, rainy days may be about to get more colorful thanks to a new umbrella invented by Japanese Researchers. Student Inventors The Internet umbrella, named Pileus (meaning the head of a mushroom) was created by two young graduate Second-year doctoral student Matsumoto Takashi, 27, and first-year masters student Hashimoto Sho, 22, of Universitys Graduate School of Media and Governance were motivated by a desire to make walking on rainy enjoyable.