AquAdvantage salmon
AquAdvantage salmon is a genetically modified Atlantic salmon developed by AquaBounty Technologies in 1989. A growth hormone-regulating gene from Pacific Chinook salmon, with a promoter gene from ocean pout, were added to the Atlantic salmon's genes; these two genes enable the GM salmon to grow year-round instead of only during summer. GM salmon are a commercially competitive alternative to wild-caught salmon and to fish farming of unmodified salmon; the purpose of the modifications is to increase the speed at which the fish grows without affecting its ultimate size or other qualities. GM fish grows to market size in 16 to 18 months rather than three years; the latter figure refers to fish-farmed Atlantic salmon whose growth rates had been improved over wild fish as a result of traditional selective breeding practices. AquaAdvantage salmon were developed in 1989 by the addition of a single copy of the opAFP-GHc2 construct, which consists of a promoter sequence from ocean pout directing production of a growth hormone protein using the coding sequence from Chinook salmon.
The continuous expression of this transgene allows the fish to grow year-round instead of only during spring and summer. The stability of the new DNA construct was tested, revealing no additional mutational effects during insertion other than the two desired genes; these GM fish were back-crossed to wild-type Atlantic salmon, the genetically modified EO-1ɑ gene sequence was identical in the second through fourth generations, indicating that the insertion is stable. While wild Atlantic salmon have two sets of chromosomes, raised AquaAdvantage salmon have three sets. Induction of triploidy by treatment of eggs renders the fish sterile, reducing the risk of interbreeding with wild-type fish if any of the genetically modified fish were introduced into the wild. AquAdvantage built a 100-ton/year aquaculture facility in Panama. Aquaculture that uses conventionally bred salmon Atlantic salmon, cultivates the fish in net pens. In North America, this occurs in coastal waters off Washington, British Columbia, Maine.
However, the application for FDA approval of AquAdvantage salmon specified land-based tank cultivation with no ocean involvement. To address the concern about biological containment, the FDA requires AquaBounty to take extra precautionary measures to ensure transgenic fish cannot get into wild fish population in the ocean. AquaBounty altered the fish to be only female and only sterile, the latter by treating the eggs to create triploid genes rendering these females sterile. Male fish are created only for egg-producing service, are kept in secure, land-based facilities in Canada.. AquAdvantage salmon eggs are treated with pressure, to create batches of fish eggs with three copies of each chromosome compared to two copies. Any batch that contains 5 percent or more diploid fish, is destroyed because these diploid fish are capable of reproducing. There are serious ecological and economic implications occur when stock fish escape from ocean-pens into native fish species’ ecosystems; the AquaBounty AquAdvantage triploid fish are higher quality meat because they do not divert energy to reproduction, as a diploid fish would, instead use the energy to grow after maturity.
AquaBounty takes extra precautionary measures to ensure better security using physical containment to reduce further any transgenic interbreed with wild Atlantic salmon. The AquaBounty transgenic Salmon are only allowed to be raised in two land-bases tanks at two sites in Canada and Panama; the fact that AquaBounty fish eggs will be produced in a land-based fresh-water research facility on Prince Edward Island in Canada, makes the cases that these AquaBounty salmon, are still salmon, salmon hatch and develop in freshwater swim to salt water to spawn when they reach adulthood so if eggs were to escape this facility, they would be unable to survive in the high salinity water nearby. These eggs are shipped to a land-based aquaculture facility at high altitude in Panama near a river that drains into the Pacific Ocean; the facility is thousands of miles away from the nearest Atlantic Salmon wild populations. It is here, the eggs grow to market size. Most of the water in the drainage river into the ocean is unsuitable for salmon to survive, is constricted by dams that act as barriers.
It is unlikely that one of the 1.2 percent diploid fish, would navigate the dam barriers and survive the lethal waters and reach the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles away. Other concerns include the heath effects of consumers due to the heightened allergenicity of the GE fish and the potential effects of the hormone levels in the fish. However, there are no newly introduced proteins, fats, or any component different from salmon that has not been engineered; the FDA has upheld that people with allergies to Atlantic Salmon will be allergic to AquAdvantage Salmon due to the similar species properties, not because it is genetically engineered and that AquAdvantage Salmon is as safe to eat as non-GE salmon because there are no significant food safety hazards associated with it. Other human health concerns arise about the increase hormone content in the edible tis
Oncorhynchus
Oncorhynchus is a genus of fish in the family Salmonidae. The name of the genus is derived from the Greek onkos and rynchos, in reference to the hooked jaws of males in the mating season. Salmon and trout with native ranges in waters draining to the Pacific Ocean are members of the genus, their range extends from Beringia southwards to Taiwan in the west and Mexico to the east. In North America, some subspecies of O. clarki are native in the Rocky Mountains and Great Basin, while others are native to the Rio Grande and western tributaries of the Mississippi River Basin which drain to the Gulf of Mexico, rather than to the Pacific. Several species of Oncorhynchus have been introduced into non-native waters around the globe establishing self-sustaining wild populations; the six Pacific salmons of Oncorhynchus are semelparous. Migration can be affected by parasites. Infected individuals can become weak and have shortened lifespans. Infection with parasites creates an effect known as culling whereby fish that are infected are less to complete the migration.
Anadromous forms of Oncorhynchus mykiss known as steelhead are iteroparous. The Coastal cutthroat trout form of Oncorhynchus clarki is considered semi-anadromous as it spends short periods of time in marine environments. Several late Miocene trout-like fossils in Idaho, in the Clarkia Lake beds, appear to be of Oncorhynchus; the presence of these species so far inland established Oncorhynchus was not only present in the Pacific drainages before the beginning of the Pliocene, but that rainbow and cutthroat trout, Pacific salmon lineages had diverged before the beginning of the Pliocene. The split between Oncorhynchus and Salmo must have occurred well before the Pliocene. Suggested dates have gone back as far as the early Miocene. One fossil species assigned to this genus, O. rastrosus, the sabertooth salmon, is a 9-foot -long species known from Late Miocene to Pleistocene fossils. Speciation among Oncorhynchus has been examined for decades, a family "tree" is not yet developed for the Pacific salmonids.
Mitochondrial DNA research has been completed on a variety of Pacific trout and salmonid species, but the results do not agree with fossil research, or molecular research. Chum and sockeye salmon lineages are agreed to have diverged in the sequence after other species. Montgomery discusses the pattern of the fossil record as compared to tectonic shifts in the plates of the Pacific Northwest of America; the divergence in Onchorhyncus lineages appear to follow the uprising of the Pacific Rim. The climatic and habitat changes that would follow such a geologic event are discussed, in the context of potential stressors leading to adaptation and speciation. One interesting case involving speciation with salmon is that of the kokanee sockeye. Kokanee sockeye evolve differently from anadromous sockeye—they reach the level of "biological species". Biological species—as opposed to morphological species—are defined by the capacity to maintain themselves in sympatry as independent genetic entities; this definition can be vexing because it applies only to sympatry, this limitation makes the definition difficult to apply.
Examples in Washington State and elsewhere have two populations living in the same lake, but spawning in different substrates at different times, eat different food sources. There is no pressure to interbreed; these types of kokanee salmon show the principal attributes of a biological species: they are reproductively isolated and show strong resources partitioning. A general decline in overall Pacific salmon populations began in the mid 19th century; as the result of western expansion and development in the U. S. experts estimate salmon populations in the Columbia River basin had been reduced to less than 20% of their pre-1850 levels by 1933. In 2008, Lackey estimated that Pacific salmon stocks in the Pacific Northwest were less than 10% of their pre-1850 numbers. Many of the remaining salmon runs are dominated by not wild salmon. Many isolated subspecies of the Pacific trouts those of Oncorhynchus mykiss rainbow trout and Oncorhynchus clarki cutthroat trout have declined in their native ranges.
Many local populations or distinct population segments of anadromous forms of steelhead have declined in their native ranges. The resulting declines have resulted in a number of populations of Oncorhynchus species or subspecies being listed as either endangered, threatened or as "Species of Special Concern" by state, federal or international authorities. Two Oncorhynchus clarki subspecies are considered extinct. Declines are attributed to a wide variety of causes—over fishing, habitat loss and degradation, artificial propagation and hybridization with or competition with introduced, non-native species. For example, the Yellowfin cutthroat trout is extinct as a result of the introduction of non-native rainbow trout into its native waters. Declines in the abundance of wild salmon due to over fishing placed greater pressure on hatcheries to increase production and restore the wild salmon stock to supply fisheries; the problem is that hatcheries can never replicate the environment of wild salmon, an issue which results in physiological and behavioral differences between wild salmon and those reared in hatcheries.
These differences are the product of genetic changes associated with inbreeding, artifi
Rainbow trout
The rainbow trout is a trout and species of salmonid native to cold-water tributaries of the Pacific Ocean in Asia and North America. The steelhead is an anadromous form of the coastal rainbow trout or Columbia River redband trout that returns to fresh water to spawn after living two to three years in the ocean. Freshwater forms that have been introduced into the Great Lakes and migrate into tributaries to spawn are called steelhead. Adult freshwater stream rainbow trout average between 1 and 5 lb, while lake-dwelling and anadromous forms may reach 20 lb. Coloration varies based on subspecies and habitat. Adult fish are distinguished by a broad reddish stripe along the lateral line, from gills to the tail, most vivid in breeding males. Wild-caught and hatchery-reared forms of this species have been transplanted and introduced for food or sport in at least 45 countries and every continent except Antarctica. Introductions to locations outside their native range in the United States, Southern Europe, New Zealand and South America have damaged native fish species.
Introduced populations may affect native species by preying on them, out-competing them, transmitting contagious diseases, or hybridizing with related species and subspecies, thus reducing genetic purity. The rainbow trout is included in the list of the top 100 globally invasive species. Nonetheless, other introductions into waters devoid of any fish species or with depleted stocks of native fish have created sport fisheries such as the Great Lakes and Wyoming's Firehole River; some local populations of specific subspecies, or in the case of steelhead, distinct population segments, are listed as either threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The steelhead is the official state fish of Washington; the scientific name of the rainbow trout is Oncorhynchus mykiss. The species was named by German naturalist and taxonomist Johann Julius Walbaum in 1792 based on type specimens from the Kamchatka Peninsula in Siberia. Walbaum's original species name, was derived from the local Kamchatkan name used for the fish, mykizha.
The name of the genus is from the Greek onkos and rynchos, in reference to the hooked jaws of males in the mating season. Sir John Richardson, a Scottish naturalist, named a specimen of this species Salmo gairdneri in 1836 to honor Meredith Gairdner, a Hudson's Bay Company surgeon at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River who provided Richardson with specimens. In 1855, William P. Gibbons, the curator of Geology and Mineralogy at the California Academy of Sciences, found a population and named it Salmo iridia corrected to Salmo irideus; these names faded once it was determined that Walbaum's description of type specimens was conspecific and therefore had precedence. In 1989, morphological and genetic studies indicated that trout of the Pacific basin were genetically closer to Pacific salmon than to the Salmos – brown trout or Atlantic salmon of the Atlantic basin. Thus, in 1989, taxonomic authorities moved the rainbow and other Pacific basin trout into the genus Oncorhynchus. Walbaum's name had precedence, so the species name Oncorhynchus mykiss became the scientific name of the rainbow trout.
The previous species names irideus and gairdneri were adopted as subspecies names for the coastal rainbow and Columbia River redband trout, respectively. Anadromous forms of the coastal rainbow trout or redband trout are known as steelhead. Subspecies of Oncorhynchus mykiss are listed below as described by fisheries biologist Robert J. Behnke. Resident freshwater rainbow trout adults average between 1 and 5 lb in riverine environments, while lake-dwelling and anadromous forms may reach 20 lb. Coloration varies between regions and subspecies. Adult freshwater forms are blue-green or olive green with heavy black spotting over the length of the body. Adult fish have a broad reddish stripe along the lateral line, from gills to the tail, most pronounced in breeding males; the caudal fin is only mildly forked. Lake-dwelling and anadromous forms are more silvery in color with the reddish stripe completely gone. Juvenile rainbow trout display parr marks typical of most salmonid juveniles. In some redband and golden trout forms parr marks are retained into adulthood.
Some coastal rainbow trout and Columbia River redband trout populations and cutbow hybrids may display reddish or pink throat markings similar to cutthroat trout. In many regions, hatchery-bred trout can be distinguished from native trout via fin clips. Fin clipping the adipose fin is a management tool used to identify hatchery-reared fish. Rainbow trout, including steelhead forms spawn in early to late spring when water temperatures reach at least 42 to 44 °F; the maximum recorded lifespan for a rainbow trout is 11 years. Freshwater resident rainbow trout inhabit and spawn in small to moderately large, well oxygenated, shallow rivers with gravel bottoms, they are native to the alluvial or freestone streams that are typical tributaries of the Pacific basin, but introduced rainbow trout have established wild, self-sustaining populations in other river types such as bedrock and spring creeks. Lake resident rainbow trout are found in moderately deep, cool lakes with
Chum salmon
The chum salmon is a species of anadromous fish in the salmon family. It is a Pacific salmon, may be known as dog salmon or keta salmon, is marketed under the name silverbrite salmon; the name chum salmon comes from the Chinook Jargon term tzum, meaning "spotted" or "marked", while keta in the scientific name comes from the Evenki language of Eastern Siberia via Russian. The body of the chum salmon is deeper than most salmonid species. In common with other species found in the Pacific, the anal fin has 12 to 20 rays, compared with a maximum of 12 in European species. Chum have an ocean coloration of silvery blue green with some indistinct spotting in a darker shade, a rather paler belly; when they move into fresh water the color changes to dark olive green and the belly color deepens. When adults are near spawning, they have purple blotchy streaks near the caudal peduncle, darker towards the tail. Spawning males grow an elongated snout or kype, their lower fins become tipped with white and they have enlarged teeth.
Some researchers speculate. Most chum salmon spawn in small intertidal zones; some chum travel more than 3,200 km up the Yukon River. Chum fry migrate out to sea from March through July immediately after becoming free swimmers, they spend one to three years traveling long distances in the ocean. These are the last salmon to spawn in some regions. In Alaska they are the first to spawn in June and August and are followed by pink and coho salmon, they die. They utilize the lower tributaries of the watershed, tend to build nests called redds little more than protected depressions in the gravel, in shallow edges of the watercourse and at the tail end of deep pools; the female lays eggs in the redd, the male sprays milt on the eggs, the female covers the eggs with gravel. The female can lay up to 4000 eggs. Chum live for an average of 3 to 5 years, chum in Alaska mature at the age of 5 years. Adult chum weigh from 4.4 to 10.0 kg with an average length of 60 cm. The record for chum was caught at Edie Pass in British Columbia.
Chum salmon have the largest natural range of any Pacific salmon, undergo the longest migrations within the genus Oncorhynchus, far up the Yukon River and deep into the Amur River basin in Asia. In lesser numbers they migrate thousands of kilometres up the Mackenzie River. Chum are found around the north Pacific, in the waters of Korea and the Okhotsk and Bering seas, British Columbia in Canada, from Alaska to California in the United States. In the Arctic Ocean they are found in limited numbers from the Laptev Sea to the Beaufort Sea. In North America chum salmon spawn from the Mackenzie River in the Arctic to as far south as Tillamook Bay, although they were reported in the San Lorenzo River near Santa Cruz, California in 1915 and the Sacramento River in northern California in the 1950s. In fall 2017 a half dozen chum salmon were counted in Lagunitas Creek about 25 miles north of San Francisco, California. Juvenile chum eat zooplankton and insects. Recent studies show that they eat comb jellies.
As adults, they eat smaller fish. The registered total harvest of the chum salmon in the North Pacific in 2010 was some 313,000 tons, corresponding to 91 million fish. Half of the catch was from Japan, about a quarter each from Russia and the United States; the chum salmon harvest was about 34% of the total harvest of all Pacific salmon species by weight. The chum salmon is the least commercially valuable salmon in North America. Despite being plentiful in Alaska, commercial fishers choose not to fish for them because of their low market value. Recent market developments have increased the demand for chum salmon. Markets developed for chum from 1984 to 1994 in Japan and northern Europe, they are a traditional source of dried salmon. Two populations of chum salmon have been listed under the Endangered Species Act as threatened species; these are the Lower Columbia River population. Chum are thought to be resistant to whirling disease, but it is unclear. National Marine Fisheries Service chum salmon web page Froese and Pauly, eds..
"Oncorhynchus keta" in FishBase. 10 2005 version. Alaska Department of Fish and Game National Marine Fisheries Service ESA Listings
Oncorhynchus masou macrostomus
The amago or the red-spotted masu salmon is a salmonid fish endemic to western Japan, a subspecies of the more widespread Northwest Pacific masu salmon or cherry salmon. It is distinguished by the presence of red or vermilion spots on the body along with black ones, while the nominate form O. masou masou, known as the yamame, only has black ones. The amago is distributed in western Japan, on the Pacific side of the Honshu and Shikoku islands, on the Inland Sea of Japan side of Kyushu; the subspecies is a subject of aquaculture. It can grow up to 50 cm length. There are both persistently stream-dwelling populations of the amago, it was considered a subspecies of Oncorhynchus rhodurus, a name that only refers to the Biwa trout, which has a restricted distribution within the range of the amago. Varying scientific nomenclature has been used of the various forms of cherry salmon; the vermilion-spotted amago has been referred to alternatively as O. m. ishikawae Jordan & McGregor, 1925, in Japanese media.
The IUCN Red List indicated "Oncorhychus ishikawai " from the Nagara River only, within the amago range, called it satsukimasu salmon. In other sources however the name O. m. ishikawae has been used of the non-anadromous forms of the widespread, black-spotted yamame, the FishBase lists it as a synonym of O. masou masou that comprises both the anadromous and non-anadromous black-spotted morphs. The Iwame trout is a recessive unmarked morph that occurs in some upstream, non-migrating populations of the amago. Y. Fujioka, My Best Streams: Profile of Amago—
Aquaculture
Aquaculture known as aquafarming, is the farming of fish, molluscs, aquatic plants and other organisms. Aquaculture involves cultivating freshwater and saltwater populations under controlled conditions, can be contrasted with commercial fishing, the harvesting of wild fish. Mariculture refers to aquaculture practiced in underwater habitats. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, aquaculture "is understood to mean the farming of aquatic organisms including fish, molluscs and aquatic plants. Farming implies some form of intervention in the rearing process to enhance production, such as regular stocking, protection from predators, etc. Farming implies individual or corporate ownership of the stock being cultivated." The reported output from global aquaculture operations in 2014 supplied over one half of the fish and shellfish, directly consumed by humans. Further, in current aquaculture practice, products from several pounds of wild fish are used to produce one pound of a piscivorous fish like salmon.
Particular kinds of aquaculture include fish farming, shrimp farming, oyster farming, mariculture and the cultivation of ornamental fish. Particular methods include aquaponics and integrated multi-trophic aquaculture, both of which integrate fish farming and aquatic plant farming; the indigenous Gunditjmara people in Victoria, may have raised eels as early as 6000 BC. Evidence indicates they developed about 100 km2 of volcanic floodplains in the vicinity of Lake Condah into a complex of channels and dams, used woven traps to capture eels, preserve them to eat all year round. Aquaculture was operating in China circa 2000 BC; when the waters subsided after river floods, some fish carp, were trapped in lakes. Early aquaculturists fed their brood using nymphs and silkworm feces, ate them. A fortunate genetic mutation of carp led to the emergence of goldfish during the Tang dynasty. However, ancient Egyptians might have farmed fish from Lake Bardawil about 3,500 years ago, they traded them with Canaan.
Gim cultivation is the oldest aquaculture in Korea. Early cultivation methods used bamboo or oak sticks, which were replaced by newer methods that utilized nets in the 19th century. Floating rafts have been used for mass production since the 1920s. Japanese cultivated seaweed by providing bamboo poles and nets and oyster shells to serve as anchoring surfaces for spores. Romans bred fish in ponds and farmed oysters in coastal lagoons before 100 CE. In central Europe, early Christian monasteries adopted Roman aquacultural practices. Aquaculture spread in Europe during the Middle Ages since away from the seacoasts and the big rivers, fish had to be salted so they did not rot. Improvements in transportation during the 19th century made fresh fish available and inexpensive in inland areas, making aquaculture less popular; the 15th-century fishponds of the Trebon Basin in the Czech Republic are maintained as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Hawaiians constructed oceanic fish ponds. A remarkable example is the "Menehune" fishpond dating from at least 1,000 years ago, at Alekoko.
Legend says. In the first half of the 18th century, German Stephan Ludwig Jacobi experimented with external fertilization of brown trouts and salmon, he wrote an article "Von der künstlichen Erzeugung der Forellen und Lachse". By the latter decades of the 18th century, oyster farming had begun in estuaries along the Atlantic Coast of North America; the word aquaculture appeared in an 1855 newspaper article in reference to the harvesting of ice. It appeared in descriptions of the terrestrial agricultural practise of subirrigation in the late 19th century before becoming associated with the cultivation of aquatic plant and animal species. In 1859, Stephen Ainsworth of West Bloomfield, New York, began experiments with brook trout. By 1864, Seth Green had established a commercial fish-hatching operation at Caledonia Springs, near Rochester, New York. By 1866, with the involvement of Dr. W. W. Fletcher of Concord, artificial fish hatcheries were under way in both Canada and the United States; when the Dildo Island fish hatchery opened in Newfoundland in 1889, it was the largest and most advanced in the world.
The word aquaculture was used in descriptions of the hatcheries experiments with cod and lobster in 1890. By the 1920s, the American Fish Culture Company of Carolina, Rhode Island, founded in the 1870s was one of the leading producers of trout. During the 1940s, they had perfected the method of manipulating the day and night cycle of fish so that they could be artificially spawned year around. Californians harvested wild kelp and attempted to manage supply around 1900 labeling it a wartime resource. Harvest stagnation in wild fisheries and overexploitation of popular marine species, combined with a growing demand for high-quality protein, encouraged aquaculturists to domesticate other marine species. At the outset of modern aquaculture, many were optimistic that a "Blue Revolution" could take place in aquaculture, just as the Green Revolution of the 20th century had revolutionized agriculture. Although land animals had long been domesticated, most seafood species were still caught from the wild.
Concerned about the impact of growing demand for seafood on the world's oceans, prominent ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau wrote in 1973: "With earth's burgeoning human populations to feed, we must turn to the sea with new understanding and new technology."About 430 of the species cultu
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian continent and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea in the south; the kanji that make up Japan's name mean "sun origin", it is called the "Land of the Rising Sun". Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands; the four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido and Shikoku, which make up about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area and are referred to as home islands. The country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions, with Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one; the population of 127 million is the world's tenth largest. 90.7 % of people live in cities. About 13.8 million people live in the capital of Japan. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world with over 38 million people. Archaeological research indicates; the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD.
Influence from other regions China, followed by periods of isolation from Western Europe, has characterized Japan's history. From the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shōguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a long period of isolation in the early 17th century, ended in 1853 when a United States fleet pressured Japan to open to the West. After nearly two decades of internal conflict and insurrection, the Imperial Court regained its political power in 1868 through the help of several clans from Chōshū and Satsuma – and the Empire of Japan was established. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victories in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism; the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the Japanese surrender. Since adopting its revised constitution on May 3, 1947, during the occupation led by SCAP, the sovereign state of Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with an Emperor and an elected legislature called the National Diet.
Japan is a member of the ASEAN Plus mechanism, UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the G20, is considered a great power. Its economy is the world's third-largest by nominal GDP and the fourth-largest by purchasing power parity, it is the world's fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer. Japan benefits from a skilled and educated workforce. Although it has renounced its right to declare war, Japan maintains a modern military with the world's eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a developed country with a high standard of living and Human Development Index, its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, but is experiencing issues due to an aging population and low birthrate. Japan is renowned for its historical and extensive cinema, influential music industry, video gaming, rich cuisine and its major contributions to science and modern technology; the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, pronounced Nihon or Nippon and means "the origin of the sun".
The character nichi means "sun" or "day". The compound therefore means "origin of the sun" and is the source of the popular Western epithet "Land of the Rising Sun"; the earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, the Old Book of Tang. At the end of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan requested that Nihon be used as the name of their country; this name may have its origin in a letter sent in 607 and recorded in the official history of the Sui dynasty. Prince Shōtoku, the Regent of Japan, sent a mission to China with a letter in which he called himself "the Emperor of the Land where the Sun rises"; the message said: "Here, I, the emperor of the country where the sun rises, send a letter to the emperor of the country where the sun sets. How are you". Prior to the adoption of Nihon, other terms such as Yamato and Wakoku were used; the term Wa is a homophone of Wo 倭, used by the Chinese as a designation for the Japanese as early as the third century Three Kingdoms period.
Another form of Wa, Wei in Chinese) was used for an early state in Japan called Nakoku during the Han dynasty. However, the Japanese disliked some connotation of Wa 倭, it was therefore replaced with the substitute character Wa, meaning "togetherness, harmony"; the English word Japan derives from the historical Chinese pronunciation of 日本. The Old Mandarin or early Wu Chinese pronunciation of Japan was recorded by Marco Polo as Cipangu. In modern Shanghainese, a Wu dialect, the pronunciation of characters 日本; the old Malay word for Japan, Japun or Japang, was borrowed from a southern coastal Chinese dialect Fukienese or Ningpo – and this Malay word was encountered by Portuguese traders in Southeast Asia in the 16th century. These Early Portuguese traders brought the word
