In 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into the multicellular Metazoa (now synonymous with Animalia) and the Protozoa, single-celled organisms no longer considered animals. The animal kingdom is divided into five major clades, namely Porifera, Ctenophora, Placozoa, Cnidaria and Bilateria. Animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, have muscle cells, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula, during embryonic development.
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- The remaining animals, the great majority—comprising some 29 phyla and over a million species—form the Bilateria clade, which have a bilaterally symmetric body plan.
- The animal mode of nutrition is called heterotrophic because they get their food from other living organisms.
- In addition to sponges, Placozoa has no symmetry and was often considered a “missing link” between protists and multicellular animals.
- The country’s military, the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF), is restricted by Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which renounces Japan’s right to declare war or use military force in international disputes.
- Widely considered a great power and the only Asian member of the G7, it maintains one of the world’s strongest militaries but has constitutionally renounced its right to declare war.
Since 1973, all elderly persons have been covered by government-sponsored insurance. People without insurance through employers can participate in a national health insurance program administered by local governments. Payment for personal medical services is offered through a universal health insurance system that provides relative equality of access, with fees set by a government committee. Other minority religions include Hinduism, Judaism, and Baháʼí Faith, as well as basswin the animist beliefs of the Ainu. Throughout the latest century, Western customs originally related to Christianity, including Western style weddings, Valentine’s Day and Christmas, have become popular as secular customs among many Japanese.
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The country hosted the official 2006 Basketball World Championship and co-hosted the 2023 Basketball World Championship. Super GT is the most popular national racing series in Japan, while Super Formula is the top-level domestic open-wheel series. Green tea is produced in Japan and prepared in forms such as matcha, used in the Japanese tea ceremony.
Kumi-daiko (ensemble drumming) was developed in post-war Japan and became very popular in North America. The popular folk music, with the guitar-like shamisen, dates from the 16th century. The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter is considered the oldest extant Japanese narrative.
Modern era
The Ryukyu Islands, which include Okinawa, are a chain to the south of Kyushu. The country’s five main islands, from north to south, are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu and Okinawa. On March 11, 2011, Japan suffered the Tōhoku earthquake—the largest by magnitude in its recorded history—which, along with the ensuing tsunami, triggered the Fukushima nuclear accident. The war cost Japan millions of lives and many of its conquered territories, including de jure parts of Japan such as Korea, Taiwan, Karafuto, and the Kurils.
- Japan is a unitary state and constitutional monarchy in which the power of the emperor (Tennō) is limited to a ceremonial role.
- The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter is considered the oldest extant Japanese narrative.
- The country attracted 36.9 million international tourists in 2024, and was ranked eleventh in the world in 2019 for inbound tourism.
- The following table lists estimated numbers of described extant species for the major animal phyla, along with their principal habitats (terrestrial, fresh water, and marine), and free-living or parasitic ways of life.
- In contrast, the cells of other multicellular organisms (primarily algae, plants, and fungi) are held in place by cell walls, and so develop by progressive growth.
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- Since the late 19th century, the judicial system has been largely based on the civil law of Europe, notably Germany.
Spinner Shark
The Japanese archipelago consists of four major islands alongside over 14,000 smaller islands. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asian mainland, it is bordered to the west by the Sea of Japan, the Sea of Okhotsk in the north, and the East China Sea in the south. A fish is adapted to its life in water and a crab is adapted to a life catching and eating insects.
Numbers and habitats of major phyla
However, these estimates are based on people affiliated with a temple, rather than the number of true believers. Japanese Sign Language is the primary sign language used in Japan and has gained some official recognition, but its usage has been historically hindered by discriminatory policies and a lack of educational support. English has taken a major role in Japan as a business and international link language, and is a compulsory subject at the junior and senior high school levels. Japanese writing uses kanji (Chinese characters) and two sets of kana (syllabaries based on cursive script and radicals used by kanji), as well as the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals. The Japanese language is Japan’s de facto national language and the primary written and spoken language of most people in the country.
Japan is a unitary state and constitutional monarchy in which the power of the emperor (Tennō) is limited to a ceremonial role. As the host and signatory of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, Japan is under treaty obligation to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions and to take other steps to curb climate change. Japan ranks 20th in the 2018 Environmental Performance Index, which measures a country’s commitment to environmental sustainability. The highest temperature ever measured in Japan, 41.8 °C (107.2 °F), was recorded on August 5, 2025. The main rainy season begins in early May in Okinawa, and the rain front gradually moves north.
Animals such as the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster serve a major role in science as experimental models. Working animals including cattle and horses have been used for work and transport from the first days of agriculture. The human population exploits a large number of other animal species for food, both of domesticated livestock species in animal husbandry and, mainly at sea, by hunting wild species. Since then, the last four have all been subsumed into a single phylum, the Chordata, while his Insecta (which included the crustaceans and arachnids) and Vermes have been renamed or broken up.