For more information see the Japan profile.

Japan, consisting of four large islands and 3,000 small islands in the northwest Pacific, is a mountainous country, and only 13% of the land can be cultivated. Today, it is the world's most powerful export-oriented economy, despite the lack of oil and raw materials.

A constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary democracy, Japan guarantees religious freedom to all. The rising power of nationalistic Shintoism partly associated with the new Emperor is tarnishing that freedom and tends to be hostile to anything un-Japanese. The sincere, polite, hard-working Japanese are too busy to give heed to the gospel and understand little of what is right or wrong, or of the meaning of sin, because they do not know the Creator God.