Population

Based on the preliminary count of the 2010 population census, Japan's population is 127,076,183, making it the world's tenth most populated country.

After having experienced net population loss over a number of years due to falling birth rates and almost no net immigration, and despite having one of the highest life expectancies in the world at 81.25 years of age as of 2006, Japan's population rose for a second year in a row in 2009, mainly because more Japanese returned to Japan than left.

Japan's population density is 337 persons per square kilometer, making it the world's 36th most densely populated country.. Most Japanese reside in densely populated urban areas. Japan's capital city is Tokyo. The population of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area including the city, some of its suburbs and the surrounding area is approximately 12 million.

For most of Japan's history its borders were closed to foreigners. As a result, Japan's society is very homogeneous, composed of 98.5% ethnic Japanese. The remaining 1.5% is mostly North and South Korean, who number around 1 million, Chinese 0.6 million, Filipinos 0.5 million, Brazilians 250,000, Peruvians 200,000, and others.

There are two ethnic minorities of indigenous people found in Japan: the Ryukyuans and the Ainu. The Ryukyuan people are mostly found in Okinawa and distinguished for their use of several distinct dialects, though similar to Japanese culture in many ways, the Ryukyuan culture has had a much larger influence from China. The Ainu, who live mostly in the northern Hokkaido, preserve their language through song and stories told through generations.

Japanese is the official language of Japan. Many Japanese also have some ability in writing and speaking English, as it is a mandatory part of the curriculum in the Japanese educational system. Japanese uses four different writing systems: kanji (Chinese characters) and two sets of kana, hiragana (phonetic alphabet for native words) and katakana (phonetic alphabet for foreign words), as well as romaji ( the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals).

Besides Japanese, the Ryukyuan languages, also part of the Japonic language family, are spoken in Okinawa; however, few children learn these languages. The Ainu language, which is unrelated to Japanese or any other known language, becoming obsolete with only a few elderly native speakers remaining in Hokkaido.

As Japan's initiative to promote tourism, increasing number of signs and guides in English, Chinese and Korean languages can be found at facilities such as airports, major railway stations, and subways these days.