Japanese archipelago

American  

[jap-uh-neez ahr-kuh-pel-uh-goh, jap-uh-nees] / ˈdʒæp əˌniz ˌɑr kəˈpɛl əˌgoʊ, ˈdʒæp əˌnis /

noun

1. the nearly 2,000-mile (3,220-kilometer) chain of more than 6,850 islands in the North Pacific Ocean that form the country of Japan and the Russian island of Sakhalin, with the Sea of Japan to the west and the Sea of Okhotsk to the northeast.

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Etymology

Origin of Japanese archipelago

First recorded in 1850–55

Example Sentences

Solo Travel Japan took me on long ferry trips up and down the Japanese archipelago.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 4, 2026

China has been the biggest source of tourists to the Japanese archipelago, with almost 7.5 million visitors in the first nine months of 2025 -- a quarter of all foreign tourists, according to official figures.

From Barron's • Jan. 20, 2026

Early hominids likely made their way to the Japanese archipelago when it was still connected to the Asian continent, perhaps over 100,000 years ago.

From Textbooks • Apr. 19, 2023

And a 7000-year-old individual found near Russia’s far eastern border with China appears to derive more than one-quarter of their ancestry from a group that lived on the Japanese archipelago called the Jōmon people.

From Science Magazine • Jan. 11, 2023

From the southern tip of Kyushu to the northern tip of Hokkaido, the Japanese archipelago is nearly 1,500 miles long.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond