With 127m people living on nearly 7,000 islands, Japan is the ninth most populous country in the world.
Society is leaving its traditional roots and heading towards singledom. The Japanese are marrying later and staying married for a shorter time. In 1971, women married at 24; now they wait until they are 26. They are 53 per cent more likely to divorce than they were 10 years ago.
Thirty years ago, one fifth of households were made up of three generations. This has fallen to 11 per cent. The number of single-person households has risen to a quarter.
The Japanese could be persuaded to take only half of their holiday entitlement in1998. It took 10 years to reduce the legal working week from 48 hours to 40 in 1997. One fifth of Tokyo workers spend more than 90 minutes getting to the office. In 1999, 1m people lost their jobs due to downsizing.
Suicide was the sixth highest cause of death in 1998. Japan's National Police Agency attributed 18 per cent of suicides to financial difficulties, an increase of nearly 70 per cent on the previous year.
The sex industry in Japan is worth ¥4trillion (£275m) a year.
Each year, the Japanese buy 2.1bn comics, consume 1.3kg of green tea per household and spend ¥2.7bn (£27m) on Hello Kitty merchandise.
Figures back up the stereotype of Japan as a nation of avid tourists: 15.8m overseas trips are taken annually; 470,000 Japanese visited the UK in 1999 and spent and average of £61 a day each. Over 60,000 Japanese live in Britain, the third biggest Japanese community overseas.