Located in the Pacific Ocean, Japan, a country in East Asia, is an archipelago of 6,852 islands with Tokyo as its capital. Japan’s neighbors are China, Taiwan, North Korea, South Korea, and Russia. The Japanese economy is the second-largest developed economy in the world, the third world’s s largest one by nominal GDP after the United States and the People’s Republic of China, and the fourth-largest by purchasing power parity. A member of the G7 and Group of Twenty, Japan has the world’s second-largest foreign-exchange reserves and was the fourth-largest importer as well as the fourth-largest exporter in the world in 2018. Japan is home to the world’s third-largest consumer market and 51 of the Fortune Global 500 companies. The country ranks first in the world in the Economic Complexity Index and 5th on the Global Competitiveness Report.

Since the Japanese economy is predominantly scientific and technologically based, the labor market favors highly skilled and well-educated job seekers, particularly those in the science and engineering field. The Japanese higher education system consists of about 780 universities, junior colleges, colleges of technology, and special training schools and community colleges catering to more than 2.89 million students each year. 86 of these institutions are national universities, 95 of them are local public universities, established by prefectures and municipalities while the remaining 597 ones are private four-year colleges. It must be noted that only universities and junior colleges are typically considered post secondary education providers in Japan and research institutions are considered more prestigious. The quality of Japanese universities is internationally recognized with 41 Japanese universities ranking as some of the best in the world. According to the 2020 THES – QS World University Rankings, the University of Tokyo for example ranks 22nd and Kyoto University 33rd.