Sushi might be the best way to represent this history, but surely not salmon sushi, which was invented in Norway and introduced to Japan thanks to Norwegian marketing in the late 1980s :)
One thing I was surprised was the amount of food Japan is currently importing.
I saw a number at 60% of food consumed in Japan is imported.
Coupled with the average age of a farmer is 67.6.
The other thing of note is that Japan sits on a lot of geothermal energy. But the country is hesitant to tap that resource like Iceland. A lot of people who own bathhouses near hot springs are against development of the resource for fear of losing the sprigs.
Very illuminating. I love your geography posts from which I learn so much. Reading about this made me wonder about Italy. Scheidel explains that the relative isolation from the East mediterranean made it possible to develop, albeit with the inevitable collision course with Carthago, but its geography is also interesting. Italy has the alps in the North, is very mountainous and has a long North-South territory, not quite like Chile of course, but still...
They were efficient. Twice they have removed occupiers from their land. And after that they expanded. Current occupation is now 3/4 of a century. When it overcomes that, it will be expanding again.
I asked this exact question to Claude few weeks ago and it too gave the credit to rice production but i wasn't aware of other factors.
Surprisingly ,Germany has similar land area with more overall arable land than Japan but has roughly two thirds the population of Japan. That's what prompted me to ask this
Sushi might be the best way to represent this history, but surely not salmon sushi, which was invented in Norway and introduced to Japan thanks to Norwegian marketing in the late 1980s :)
Fun article!
True!
Impressive detailed post.
One thing I was surprised was the amount of food Japan is currently importing.
I saw a number at 60% of food consumed in Japan is imported.
Coupled with the average age of a farmer is 67.6.
The other thing of note is that Japan sits on a lot of geothermal energy. But the country is hesitant to tap that resource like Iceland. A lot of people who own bathhouses near hot springs are against development of the resource for fear of losing the sprigs.
Excellent, thanks. That's some seriously tortured geology!
Japan isn't even that densely populated (39th)! India is higher, as are Taiwan, Philippines, Netherlands and Belgium.
How is Bangladesh able to keep and sustain its population (1.4x Japan, on 36% of the land),
Very illuminating. I love your geography posts from which I learn so much. Reading about this made me wonder about Italy. Scheidel explains that the relative isolation from the East mediterranean made it possible to develop, albeit with the inevitable collision course with Carthago, but its geography is also interesting. Italy has the alps in the North, is very mountainous and has a long North-South territory, not quite like Chile of course, but still...
They were efficient. Twice they have removed occupiers from their land. And after that they expanded. Current occupation is now 3/4 of a century. When it overcomes that, it will be expanding again.
Such a big coincidence.
I asked this exact question to Claude few weeks ago and it too gave the credit to rice production but i wasn't aware of other factors.
Surprisingly ,Germany has similar land area with more overall arable land than Japan but has roughly two thirds the population of Japan. That's what prompted me to ask this