Japan is the country made up of thousands of islands, including Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku.
These four are Japan’s principal islands, although Okinawa is also commonly listed among the five main islands. Honshu is the largest and most populous; Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka are all located there. Hokkaido lies to the north, while Kyushu and Shikoku sit southwest of Honshu.
The “3,000 islands” figure is an older rounded description. A modern Japanese government count using a broader mapping method identifies 14,125 islands, many of them tiny and uninhabited. Japan stretches in an arc along East Asia’s Pacific coast, from the Sea of Okhotsk toward the East China Sea.
Japan is also frequently confused with Indonesia or the Philippines when quizzes ask about island countries. Unlike those tropical archipelagos, Japan’s islands form a long, mountainous chain shaped by tectonic activity, with extensive volcanic and earthquake zones.