The Kaijus' favorite playground.
"Japan is an island by the sea filled with volcanoes, and it's b e a u t i f u l."
All the things you wanted to know about Japan, but were afraid to ask.
Settings and Useful Notes related to Japan
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Religion
Military
- Every Japanese Sword Is a Katana: Information about Japanese weapons.
- Kaiju Defense Force: Japan Self-Defense Force
- Katanas of the Rising Sun: (Imperial Japanese Armed Forces)
Politics
- Japanese Education System
- JAXA (Japan's space program)
Geography
History
Culture and Customs
Language
Works and Tropes from Japan
Japan in popular culture
- Most Manga, Anime, Japanese Literature and Kaiju works are set in Japan, obviously.
- All Samurai films are set in feudal Japan.
- A lot of US war time cartoons ridicule the Japanese due to their affiliation with the Axis, including The Ducktators, Tokio Jokio and Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips.
- American comics from the time did the same thing, as the Action Comics cover in Propaganda Machine can attest.
- The Simpsons: In "30 Minutes Over Tokyo" the family travels to Japan where they reference about every Japanese stereotype and/or reference point possible.
- South Park: The episode "Chinpokomon" has the makers of ''Pokémon" use the show to brainwash the youth so they can take over the world.
- Deep Purple recorded their best known Live Album in Osaka: Made In Japan. Many other hard rock/metal bands afterwards have had live albums recorded in concerts in Japan, such as Scorpions (Tokyo Tapes) and Judas Priest (Unleashed in the East).
- Sarah Vaughan also recorded a Live Album in Japan, though in her case in Tokyo: Live in Japan.
- All but one of Mr. Big's live albums were recorded in Japan. (They were hugely popular over there but in their native America they're remembered as a One-Hit Wonder for "To Be With You".)
- Some Western bands have also recorded music videos in Japan, like The Police's "So Lonely" and The Killers' "Read My Mind".
- Lost in Translation, a Hollywood movie taking place entirely in Tokyo, where an American movie star does some Japandering to make a living and meets an American girl he likes.
- In the first half of Kill Bill (i.e. the first of the two films), the Bride travels to Japan to act revenge on O-Ren Ishii.
- Most of the action in The Wolverine is set in Japan, as a reference to Logan's backstory there (as told in his 80's comics phase).
- The 1980 mini series Shogun with Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune is set in Japan.
- Gilbert and Sullivan's operette The Mikado is set in feudal Japan.
- Part of the James Bond film You Only Live Twice takes place in Japan.
- Madame Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini is an opera about a Japanese geisha and her love for an American lieutenant.
- The song "The Japanese Sandman" is about a sandman who exchanges yesterdays for tomorrows.
- history of japan (which can be viewed here
) is a 2016 video that presents the entire history of Japan in exactly nine minutes. Due to the way it's presented, it's become famous as a Fountain of Memes on Tumblr and other sites.
The Japanese flag
Also known as the Hinomaru ("Disc of the Sun"), the red disc on a white field has long been a symbol of the nation since the feudal era, playing on the Alternate Character Reading of Japan's name (日本), which can mean "sun-origin" or "sunrise".
