Gina Spaulding, age 15, of Carson City, Nev., for her question:
HOW MANY ISLANDS DOES JAPAN HAVE?
Japan is made up of four large islands and more than 3,000 small ones. The largest island, which is also the most heavily populated, is Honshu. To the north is Hokkaido, the second largest island, and to the south are Kyushu and Shikoku.
Honshu has the nation's greatest cities of Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe. It also has about 80 percent of Japan's total population: About 5 percent of the people live on Hokkaido, about 10 percent on Kyushu and about 4 percent on Shikoku. That leaves about 1 percent for all of the rest of the islands.
The Ryukyu and Bonin islands belonged to Japan until after World War II when the United States took control of them. In 1935, the U.S. returned the northern Ryukyus to Japan. The Bonins were returned in 1968.
In 1972, the U.S. returned the rest of the Ryukyu islands. They included Okinawa, the largest and most important island of the group.
About 100 islands make up the Ryukyus. They extend from the large Japanese islands of Kyushu to Taiwan. The Bonins lie midway between Tokyo and Guam, and there are about 100 more islands in this group.
Rugged mountains dominate the landscape on the four main islands. The mountains reach their greatest height in central Honshu, where they are known as the Japanese Alps. The most famous and highest mountain is beautiful, snowcapped Fujiyama. The perfect volcanic cone, which is 12,388 feet high, can be seen for miles in all directions. It is less than 100 miles from downtown Tokyo.
The largest area of level land in Japan is the Kanto Plain on the Pacific coast in central Honshu.
Many smaller islands and islets lie near the four major islands. The Sea of Japan lies to the country's west coast while the Pacific Ocean is to the east and south. No spot in Japan is more than 100 miles from the sea.
The name Japan comes from the Chinese Jih pen, which means "rising sun." The name was appropriate since the Japanese islands are east of China.
The Japanese call their country Nihon or Nippon, which means "source of the sun" or "land of the rising sun." An old Japanese legend tells that the first emperor and the succeeding emperors were descendants of the sun goddess.
The Japanese flag, which is a red sun in the middle of a white background, reflects the legend.
More than four fifths of Japan's land surface is hilly or mountainous, leaving little flat land for farming. In no other country in the world does such a small living area have to support so many people. By careful cultivation of the soil, farmers get more crops per acre than any other country in Asia.
Japan's land, however, cannot produce the various foods the people now demand. Food and most industrial raw materials have to be brought from other countries. To pay for its imports, Japan sells manufactured products.