• Main international airport: Haneda, Tokyo (63.2m passengers)
• Merchant fleet, total tonnage: 7151 ships (13.6m grt)

The transportation network

• Extent of inland waterways navigable by commercial craft: 1770 km (1100 miles)
• Extent of national paved road network: 898,082 km (558,041 miles)
• Extent of motorways, freeways or major national highways: 6851 km (4257 miles)
• Extent of commercial rail network: 20,096 km (12,487 miles)

Railroads are the most important means of transportation; the Shinkansen, known in the West as the bullet train, is the second-fastest in the world. It is renowned as much for its reliability – timed to the second – as for its speed. The Tokyo–Sapporo air route is said to be the busiest in the world.

Having spent decades limiting its international role since World War II, Japan has recently become more assertive on many global issues. Its eventual aim is a seat on the UN's Security Council, commensurate with its economic influence. In Asia, Japan remains burdened by the legacy of its wartime aggression, and has sometimes exacerbated the tension by moves such as revising its school history texts to downplay the crimes committed in its imperial expansion (especially in Korea) and in war. Relations with the West have been seriously strained over the issue of whaling, with Japan getting round an international moratorium by continuing to kill whales in the name of scientific monitoring.