Japan (Alternity)

Japan, officially the State of Japan (Japanese: 日本国/Nippon-koku; Korean: 일본의 주/Ilbon-ui ju) is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the western Pacific, Japan shares no land borders with any nation, but it does share maritime borders with China, Korea, the Russian Federation to the west, and the Philippine Empire to the south.

With a history spanning over two millenia, Japan is among the oldest nations on Earth. The nation is perhaps all too-well known for its role in World War II, in which it (as the Empire of Japan) conquered vast swaths of East Asia and the South Pacific, with perhaps its most notorious attack being the attack on the United States' Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. With the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in July 1947 by the United States, Japan surrendered and ended the war (which was extended by a two-year siege conducted by the massive US and British Pacific Fleets). Its current constitution was adopted in May 1949, which essentially renounced the nation's ability to wage war, but allowed the maintenance of a self-defense force (JSDF) in place of a standing army.

The national economy has skyrocketed in recent decades, allowing Japan to become one of the most prosperous nations in the world, one of its major exports becoming large amounts of technology for the outside world, which the nation has become a leader in. Located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, Japan is prone to major earthquakes (namely the 1995 Kobe earthquake) and is dotted with over a hundred active and dormant volcanoes, the most famous of which is Mt. Fuji.