>very rugged and mountainous terrain>mediocre arable land>almost no immigrationYet it still has twice the population of Great Britain (126M vs 67M). Which has more level terrain, much more arable land, and has taken on millions of immigrations over the past few decades. How is this possible?
rice, fishing, being manlets
rice is insanely calorie dense compared to wheat and especially barely
Japanese like living in small boxes and eating riceBritish people actively do not like this, the life goal of a British person is a home in the countryside, not in a city
>>16883501its about 50% bigger in terms of surface area an has rice as principle crop historically which produces more per acre
>>16883518>barelyBarely what?
Most of japans food is imported .
>>16883560Not quite true, the goal is actually to get a four bedroom in the prestigious middle class area of a large town. And then get a second home in some village, forcing the people who grew up there to move out.
It is crazy how the yangtze river has benefited the region
>>16883508>>16883518>>16883560>>16884283I was expecting a more comprehensive answer than just "rice." I don't get how rice makes a far higher population. Besides wheat societies are always more dominant than rice societies.
>>16884592>I was expecting a more comprehensive answer than just "rice."Sometimes it's just that simple>Besides wheat societies are always more dominant than rice societiesThat may be true but it has nothing to do with population
>>16884592As this anon>>16883518 already mentioned, rice is very calorie dense compared to wheat. So in other words you can sustain more people per hectare or acre from farming rice than you can from wheat. In some sub-tropical areas you can also plant two growing seasons for rice per year, whereas wheat usually usually only has one growing season per annum (thus doubling the population that rice farming can sustain). The mountainous terrain is inadvertently quite useful for rice farming as you can redirect the water sources from the uplands to flood your paddies. Also Japan is more than twice the size of the UK, so only around 20% of Japan being arable actually out matches the UK’s arable land (36%) in total area.But you are right it’s a lot more complicated than just rice farming. Japan did have a larger population than Britain in the pre-industrial age with 1700s Japan having around 25 million to Britain which reached around 9 million by the turn of the 19th century. Both countries experienced rapid population growth through their respective industrialisation periods as mortality rates declined drastically while still maintaining a high birth rate until the mid-20th century. Both have long since outstripped their ability to feed themselves and rely on imports, but Japan’s fairly large pre-industrial population did give it an edge to expand to a +100 million population. Also Britain had massive migration to the colonies with tens of millions of descendants abroad, while Japanese emigration was more limited with only really America and Brazil having more than a million japs.
>>16883501Japan is very hot and damp in the summer.You could say it's part-time tropical.Tropical countries are always populous
>>16883501Rice rice baby
>>16883501It looks like they were about the same in 1900, but Japan experienced a population boom in the early 20th century.https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population?time=1700..latest&country=GBR~JPN
>>16883501It's not obvious at a glance due to map projection distortions but Japan is four times larger than the landmass of the UK.
>>16883508>>16883518It must also be noted that england has a different climate
>>16886493Isn't japan also more mountainous than england?
>>16883508same height as most western countries now apparently
>>16886843No?
>>16886983Why are you getting passive aggressive over such a small error? effeminate faggot.
>>16883501Subtropical climate
>>16886533That just adds more surface area by means of verticality.
>>16884300he can't spell. it's meant to read "barley".
>>16884592can't find any source now but remember reading that rice is superior to other wheat and other grains not only because of calories per kg, but because of its efficiency. in the preindustrial world, before modern farming and modern varieties of seeds, each seed of rice could yield 7 new usable seeds. for wheat and so on, the ratio was something like to 1 to 3, sometimes close to 1 to 1 in bad years which meant that farmers chose between almost starving or not having crops next year, since every year you are supposed to save some for the next crop. i wish i could find the ratios for each kind of plant>>16886533also keep in mind not all of england is very fertile, right? my understanding is that most of scotland for example is bad for anything other than grass
>>16884592Rice is insanely labour intense crop to grow, but once the ball gets rolling, there is nothing like it when it comes to calories per acre of arable land. Its also vulnerable to invasions and military aggression, as rice farming is a full time occupation while grain farming can account for several months of absentee farmers (on a military campaign) without any massive crop failures.Japan had a historically high population compared to England. In 1600, Japanese population was between 12 and 22 million, while the English population was around 4 million. The Japanese land system kept the population at bay, focusing pretty solely on rice cultivation. Three hundred years of internal peace with no external military campaigns is also nothing to scoff at: meanwhile, the English were killing hundreds of thousands of able bodied men on their imperial conquests - the intervention in Haiti alone killed 40 000 Englishmen.
>>16887078I don't think it works like that; you can cultivate on mountains but it's never ideal (more intensive methids/lower yields)
>>16887496it always depends on the mountain, but as long as they aren't too high or too steep, the soil can still be great for farming. it lets you build terraces which are great for rice, because of how good they are at trapping water as someone said abovei think england is not very good for farming in any case, comparately, because it's too far from the ecuator. too cold, summers way shorter than in japan
>>16884432i thought only boomers and retirees lived in villages. do people still grow up in them?
>>16883501Better coastal geography, lots of harbors, Lake Biwa, etc. Also the Japanese peasantry had more lenient land rights than British peasantry throughout history. Also Japan is at least 1.5x the size of British isles land-wise.
>>16884592More grain per acre, doesn't need crop rotation, and can be harvested multiple times a year in warm places.
>>16887531>it lets you build terraces which are great for rice, because of how good they are at trapping water as someone said aboveYes which is an even more labor intensive method; you can cultivate on moutains but they can't beat plains.
