The English name "Japan" has
a a mysterious past, but
most agree that it has its roots in an old Chinese name
for Japan, ""jipanguo" roughly meaning "silver
country." In those ancient times, silver was highly
prized in China, which lacked this resource in any great
amount. They traded for it with Japan, which had it in
relatively large quantities. Thus the name.) The first
Europeans ( usually attributed to Marco Polo - ) to visit
China heard tales of a distant land called "ji-pan-guo" and
marked it on their primitive maps. As is the case with
many linguistic corruptions from antiquity, ji-pan-guo became
shortened to "Japan."
The Japanese refer to their country as "nihon" or "nippon",
which come from the two Chinese characters for "sun" (ni) and "root/base" ("hon" or "pon").
This is where the term "land of the rising sun" originates.
The Chinese characters mean something akin to "the base
of the sun/ place where the sun is," in other words, "where
the sun comes from." Thus, in English, "rising
sun." The difference in pronunciation is rooted in Japanese
grammatical rules for combining Chinese characters. Generally,
the softer "nihon" is used in daily conversation
when just referring to Japan in some way, and "nippon: has
a little stronger and a bit more governmental/historical/emphatic
overtone. However, it is a bit like the differences in nuance
among "America", "the States," "the
U.S.", "the U.S.A.", and the "United
States of America." There are differences, but it's
difficult to precisely establish exact "rules" for
their usage.
Japan has 47 administrative districts,
called "ken*, which
are translated as "prefectures" in English, and
roughly correspond to "states" in the United
States (but with far less independence in laws.) They are:
| Aichi |
Hiroshima |
Kumamoto |
Okayama |
Tokyo* |
| Akita |
Hokkaido* |
Kyoto* |
Okinawa |
Tottori |
| Aomori |
Hyogo |
Mie |
Osaka* |
Toyama |
| Chiba |
Ibaraki |
Miyagi |
Saga |
Wakayama |
| Ehime |
Ishikawa |
Miyazaki |
Saitama |
Yamagata |
| Fukui |
Iwate |
Nagano |
Shiga |
Yamaguchi |
| Fukuoka |
Kagawa |
Nagasaki |
Shimane |
Yamanashi |
| Fukushima |
Kagoshima |
Nara |
Shizuoka |
|
| Gifu |
Kanagawa |
Niigata |
Tochigi |
|
| Gunma |
Kochi |
Ohita |
Tokushima |
|
* The exceptions are Tokyo-to, Osaka-fu, Kyoto-fu,
and Hokkaido (the northernmost island province)
which are not actually "ken" but are classified
with them as independent administrative districts. In the
case of Tokyo, -to is the character meaning "capital" and
in Osaka and Kyoto, the character"fu" generally
means "government," it just designates that the
cities are self-governing areas with the generally the
same administrative powers as a -ken.
