Universities in Northern Japan

Abstract

Japan is usually regarded as a southern nation not a northern or circumpolar one. After all, the Japanese islands are strung on a line from the Ryuku islands near Taiwan, and near the Tropic of Cancer, to the Kuriles, near the Kamchatka peninsula. The northern limit of Japan is only about latitude 45 degrees north. However, Hokkaido, the northernmost of the larger islands does have many sub-arctic characteristics and a number of institutions on Hokkaido, including some of its universities, do have circumpolar connections.