Japan and Its Place in the Pacific Rim: Past, Present and Future

Japan and Its Place in the Pacific Rim: Past, Present and Future

Introduction

Japan has lots of strategic importance. Japan lies in eastern Asia. Four large islands, Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu, account for about 98% of the country's land area. Following its defeat in the Second World War, Japan was placed under US military occupation. A new democratic Constitution, which took effect in 1947, renounced war and abandoned the doctrine of the Emperor's divinity. Japan regained its independence in 1952. From its formation in 1955 until its defeat at the 2009 election, the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) dominated Japanese politics. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) secured a large majority in the lower chamber at the election for the House of Representatives in July 2009. Tokyo is the capital. The language is Japanese. This paper discusses Japan, its place in the Pacific Rim and its past, present and future in a concise and comprehensive way.

Japan and Its Place in the Pacific Rim: Past, Present and Future

Japan is the this east Asian country, consisting of islands, has a recorded history going back to ancient times, with a royal family (previously the imperial family) that traces its ancestry back to 660 b.c.e. Japan has a population of 128,085,000 (2005), with 193 doctors and 745 nurses per 100,000 people. An example of cancer incidence rates in Japan includes 261.5 cases of cancer in males per 100,000, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (Masayuki, 1999).

Japan has one of the lowest rates of coronary heart disease in the world, and the incidence of lung cancer and of breast cancer in females is historically very low, although that of stomach cancer is high, possibly because of the Japanese diet (Masayuki, 1999). Breast and colon cancer incidence rates have recently caught up with rates on-served in Western countries.

Cancer is one of the major causes of death in Japan, and it seems likely that this was the case for hundreds of years, before detailed records were kept. Archaeologists working on sites in Japan have unearthed skeletons from the medieval period that showed evidence of bone cancer (Masayuki, 1999). It is also believed that the militant Buddhist monk Nichiren died from cancer of the intestinal tract.

One recent study showed that the human T-cell leukemia-lymphoma virus was found in Japan but was limited to the coastal regions of Kyushu and Shikoku. When this extremely rare form of cancer also was found in Mozambique and South Africa, researchers concluded that the strain of cancer might be hereditary and could have been brought by Portuguese traders who lived in the Kyushu region during the 16th century. It is believed that the traders brought the disease from Africa. During the late 19th century there was considerable improvement in Japan's medical services. The Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research was established in 1908, and Japanese researchers have been prominent in cancer research since then. Beginning in the 1910s, Japanese contributions were published in Journal ...