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.
Okinawans are still quite related to Japanese in language and custom, unlike the Ainu. But yeah, it could've been included, just didn't jive with the "North is different" geographical angle Tomas was going for.
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...
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
The unity point is what stuck with me most — Japan didn't just get lucky with fertile valleys, it got the rare combination of being isolated enough to avoid constant invasion but connected enough to keep absorbing agricultural innovation from the mainland. Too isolated and it never gets rice or iron tools at all. Too exposed and it spends centuries like Korea, fighting wars on everyone else's behalf instead of investing in irrigation. The back-arc basin creating exactly the right distance is a wild thing to trace all the way back to plate tectonics, but it explains something usually credited to culture or governance.
Really glad it landed - genuinely fun essay to sit with. The kind of piece that makes you rethink how much of what gets credited to "culture" is actually just an accident of geography that happened millions of years before anyone showed up to build a culture on top of it.
You mention this in passing, but I feel like reclamation is a big story here, especially for Japanese urban history. All 3 of the major plains (Kanto, Osaka, Nobi) had a lot of swampy land and flooding problems well into the Edo era. Obviously the potential was there, but Edo and Nagoya barely existed before 1600, and Osaka overtook Kyoto only after that as well. I'm guessing there's some interesting illustration of how exactly the later growth spurts happened.
I'm a bit puzzled by the genetic proximity map. Yes, the Ainu are a genetically distinct group from the Japanese, but the present-day residents of Hokkaido are mostly descendants of migrants from elsewhere in Japan during the Meiji era and later.
Very interesting and complete as usual, but I'm a bit unsure about your separation of the "two Koreas" as a counterfactual. Wouldn't it be more sensible to use the entire paeninsula as a comparison? But in that case, you would see that Japan started to seriously outgrow it only after 1600 a.d., whereas their populations had been quite similar until that moment
I was intrigued by the volcanic nutrient hypothesis like Java.
I didn't find this to be a convincing dismissal of it:
"Japan today is actually not as densely populated as South Korea or Taiwan, if we consider total cultivated land! And South Korea is not a volcanic peninsula! So, in the case of Japan, its large population isn’t attributable to volcanoes."
The thing about Java vs its neighboring islands is that the population gap is brutal, the only difference is volcanoes, and they're superactive, bringing a ton of ash all the time. Also, Java has something special, which is it's in the highest rain area of the world (the equator), so land gets hyperleached, and needs something to refill its fertility
Whereas Japan is less densely populated than SK and TW, and its volcanoes AFAIK are less active in ash distribution (even though they are).
This might get clarified when I read your Java article, but I'm a little confused -- what created the fertile valleys, was it the (volcanic?) sediment (I assume the sediment is volcanic and that volcanic sediment / ash is fertile) that ran off the mountains, or was it nutrients in the water that the sediment ran off into, or a combination of both? Hmm, my guess it was both, but the volcanic ash was the biggest contributor?
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.
Yes, imports took over in the 20th century as the population overgrew it’s carrying capacity
Didn’t know about the geothermal hesitance!
"They were vanquished by tsunamis both times"
This seemed too crazy so I had too look it up - I think you meant typhoons
Fixed. Thank you!
Yep typhoons and not tsunamis, this is the origin of the word kamikaze (“divine storm”) actually!
Duh! I'm so dumb!
In the intro your omitted the different ethnicity and culture in Okinawa
Okinawans are still quite related to Japanese in language and custom, unlike the Ainu. But yeah, it could've been included, just didn't jive with the "North is different" geographical angle Tomas was going for.
Excellent, thanks. That's some seriously tortured geology!
Great article! Glad that you are writing about geography again.
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),
Yeah I will eventually do bangladesh. Crazy country.
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...
Italy has one of the toughest geo histories in Europe, but I have a thesis on it!
Can't wait to read it! Are you going to write an article on Italy soon?
Not sure! I need a trigger!
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
Germany had more wars, more disease, and also it’s farther north, so no rice and no double cropping!
The unity point is what stuck with me most — Japan didn't just get lucky with fertile valleys, it got the rare combination of being isolated enough to avoid constant invasion but connected enough to keep absorbing agricultural innovation from the mainland. Too isolated and it never gets rice or iron tools at all. Too exposed and it spends centuries like Korea, fighting wars on everyone else's behalf instead of investing in irrigation. The back-arc basin creating exactly the right distance is a wild thing to trace all the way back to plate tectonics, but it explains something usually credited to culture or governance.
I love this! You're getting exactly to the type of insight that I think makes these articles hard to make but so useful. Thx!
Really glad it landed - genuinely fun essay to sit with. The kind of piece that makes you rethink how much of what gets credited to "culture" is actually just an accident of geography that happened millions of years before anyone showed up to build a culture on top of it.
You mention this in passing, but I feel like reclamation is a big story here, especially for Japanese urban history. All 3 of the major plains (Kanto, Osaka, Nobi) had a lot of swampy land and flooding problems well into the Edo era. Obviously the potential was there, but Edo and Nagoya barely existed before 1600, and Osaka overtook Kyoto only after that as well. I'm guessing there's some interesting illustration of how exactly the later growth spurts happened.
I'm a bit puzzled by the genetic proximity map. Yes, the Ainu are a genetically distinct group from the Japanese, but the present-day residents of Hokkaido are mostly descendants of migrants from elsewhere in Japan during the Meiji era and later.
I might need to look more into the reclamation. Thx!
On genetics, yes, it's a matter of shares, not absolute numbers
Matter of shares?
Fun read, nicely done!
Very interesting and complete as usual, but I'm a bit unsure about your separation of the "two Koreas" as a counterfactual. Wouldn't it be more sensible to use the entire paeninsula as a comparison? But in that case, you would see that Japan started to seriously outgrow it only after 1600 a.d., whereas their populations had been quite similar until that moment
Hm Japan passed Korea a long time ago in terms of total population
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population
Not sure on density.
But the pop density of the two Koreas hasn’t changed that much over time.
I was intrigued by the volcanic nutrient hypothesis like Java.
I didn't find this to be a convincing dismissal of it:
"Japan today is actually not as densely populated as South Korea or Taiwan, if we consider total cultivated land! And South Korea is not a volcanic peninsula! So, in the case of Japan, its large population isn’t attributable to volcanoes."
The thing about Java vs its neighboring islands is that the population gap is brutal, the only difference is volcanoes, and they're superactive, bringing a ton of ash all the time. Also, Java has something special, which is it's in the highest rain area of the world (the equator), so land gets hyperleached, and needs something to refill its fertility
Whereas Japan is less densely populated than SK and TW, and its volcanoes AFAIK are less active in ash distribution (even though they are).
Thanks, that helps fill in how you were thinking.
I wonder what SK and TW's population was historically, back when food was harder to import?
Taiwan was inhabited by non-Chinese natives until around 1600 or so, and didn't have a huge population by any means. Not sure about Korea.
This might get clarified when I read your Java article, but I'm a little confused -- what created the fertile valleys, was it the (volcanic?) sediment (I assume the sediment is volcanic and that volcanic sediment / ash is fertile) that ran off the mountains, or was it nutrients in the water that the sediment ran off into, or a combination of both? Hmm, my guess it was both, but the volcanic ash was the biggest contributor?
So beautiful express human emotion and geographical contexts.👏