Japan
Japan is a country in Asia of islands, four of them are large. The islands lie off the east Asian coast in the western part of the Pacific Ocean.The name "Japan" is actually a foreign word. In Japan, they refer to their country as "Nihon" or "Nippon", which literally means "The origin of the sun". The Japanese used to believe that the Japanese emperors were the children of the Sun goddess, Amaterasu. But, the emperor said that he was not anymore after World War II.
History
Japan has history in writing after the 5th and 6th centuries, when Korea and China told Japan about the Chinese writing system. Japan's neighbors also showed them the ways of Buddhism, that the Japanese changed quite a lot later into ideas such as Zen.
Japan had contacts with the Europeans for a little while in the 16th century. But Japan's men of politics knew these Europeans would one day bring army with them to make Japan theirs, so the Japanese did not let the Europeans come into Japan anymore, except a small small area. Japan was open again in 1854.
This new contact with European and Americans changed some ways of Japanese life. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 stopped some old ways and added some new ones. Japan became a very powerful nation. It tried to take over its neighbours, like China, Manchuria, [Taiwan]] and Korea. In the early 20th century, Japan's area grew more and more. It had two wars with China. Many people were killed, such as the 260,000 Chinese in the Nanjing Massacre.
Japan dropped bombs on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii of the United States in 1941. Four years later, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and killed 130,000 Japanese people in a few seconds. Japan gave up its war and gave up all the places it took from other countries.
Japan was hurt very much after the atomic bombs, but it grew strong again very soon and very rich.