CountriesJapanRank 11 of 9818 words16 placesJapan18 English words in this atlas point back to Japan, spread across 16 places.ShareWordThe placeRelationshipConfidencejapanThe lacquer is simply the country, used as a verb.JapanFrom the placeWell attestedsatsumaThe orange is named for a former Japanese province.Satsuma ProvinceHistorical nameWell attestedMishimaThe inlaid pottery is named for a Japanese city's almanac.MishimaFrom the placeWell attestedMinamata diseaseAn industrial disaster gave a Japanese city's name to a disease.MinamataFrom the placeWell attestedKobe beefThe cattle are not from Kobe; the foreigners who ate them were.KobeFrom its productWell attestedKyoto ProtocolTreaties take the name of whichever city happened to host the meeting.KyotoFrom the placeWell attestedabukumaliteIt came out of a vertical pipe of pegmatite only sixty meters across that is packed with yttrium minerals.Abukuma RiverFrom the placeProbableaniliteMachine matching regularly sends this name to the ruined Armenian city of Ani; the real Ani is a copper mine in northern Japan.Ani mineFrom the placeWell attestedbicchuliteIt was described simultaneously from a Japanese limestone skarn and a basalt contact in County Antrim.BitchūFrom the placeWell attestedikunoliteNamed for a silver mine that had already been working for four centuries when the mineral was found in it.Ikuno MineFrom the placeWell attestedJapanimationThe word English speakers used for anime before they used anime.JapanIndirectWell attestedJapanophileThe word arrived with the first wave of Western enthusiasm for Japanese art.JapanIndirectWell attestedkamaishiliteThe mine behind the name also gave Japan its first Western style blast furnace.KamaishiFrom the placeWell attestedkawazuliteIts synthetic analog is one of the best-studied thermoelectric and topological insulator materials.Shizuoka PrefectureFrom the placeWell attestedohmiliteThe type locality no longer exists as a place name: the town was folded into a neighboring city in 2005.ŌmiFrom the placeWell attestedokayamaliteThe mine that produced it already had a mineral named after it, so the next find took the name of the whole prefecture.Okayama PrefectureFrom the placeWell attestedomineliteA blue borosilicate from a mountain that has been closed to women for over a thousand years as a Shugendō training ground.Mount ŌmineFrom the placeWell attestedrengeiteIt was found by sawing open jade pebbles picked off a Japanese beach.Mount RengeFrom the placeWell attestedElsewhere in the atlasUnited States153United Kingdom108Italy63France57Germany29Greece29Canada22Turkey22People's Republic of China21Spain20India16Mexico13Belgium12Australia11All 98 countries →