After conducting a count with the help of digital mapping technology, several specialists announced that Japan It is made up of 14,125 islands and islets, 7,273 more than previously believed. This is the first study carried out on the subject in 35 years and, despite having found several of these places in its ocean, the government indicated that this will most likely not change the territorial waters.
The last time a map of the entire territory belonging to the “land of the rising sun” had been made was in 1987, when the coast guard used paper maps to carry out the count, where they took as an “island” any territory that has a circumference of more than 100 meters, resulting in a total of 6,825 islands. Finally the government of Japan decided to update their maps by using technology, but keeping the same criteria that was used in the late 80’s.
In this way, digitized maps were taken that were crossed with aerial images taken over the years in the sea of Japan in order to arrive at a number closer to reality and thus also to be able to exclude from the count the territories that consist of recovered land.
The first step to take this measure came after a congressman from the Liberal Democratic Party, who is in power, stated in a parliamentary session during December 2018 that an “accurate understanding of the number of islands we have is an administrative issue very important and is related to the national interest.”
Japan criticized China for spy balloons
In the midst of a major international scandal between the United States and China over the entry of “spy balloons” to North American lands, Japan He also criticized his neighbors after stating that they suspect that several of these vehicles entered, at least three times, within their airspace since 2019.
According to the defense minister of the Asian nation, they suspect that several unidentified objects that entered their airspace at the end of the last decade could be spy balloons. “It is something completely unacceptable,” they denounced from the japanese government about this situation, after demanding that the Chinese government “confirm the facts.”
