Japan ⁱ/dʒəˈpæn/ (Japanese: 日本 Nihon or Nippon; formally 日本国  Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku, literally the State of Japan) is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters that make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin", which is why Japan is sometimes referred to as the "Land of the Rising Sun".

Japan is an archipelago of 6,852 islands. The four largest islands are Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū and Shikoku, together accounting for ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area. Japan has the world's tenth-largest population, with over 127 million people. The Greater Tokyo Area, which includes the de facto capital city of Tokyo and several surrounding prefectures, is the largest metropolitan area in the world, with over 30 million residents.

Archaeological research indicates that people lived in Japan as early as the Upper Paleolithic period. The first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other nations followed by long periods of isolation has characterized Japan's history. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victory 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 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since adopting its revised constitution in 1947, Japan has maintained a unitary constitutional monarchy with an emperor and an elected parliament called the Diet.

Sheena Easton (born Sheena Shirley Orr; 27 April 1959) is a Scottish recording artist. Easton became famous for being the focus of an episode in the British television programme The Big Time, which recorded her attempts to gain a record contract and her eventual signing with EMI Records. Easton is a two-time Grammy winner and has 15 US Top 40 singles on the Billboard US Pop Singles chart to date. She is the only artist in the history of the Billboard chart to have a Top Five single on all the key charts: Pop/Rock, R&B, Country, Dance, and Adult Contemporary.

Easton rose to fame in the early 1980s with the pop hits "9 to 5" (known as "Morning Train" in the United States), "For Your Eyes Only," "Strut," "Sugar Walls," "U Got the Look" with Prince, and "The Lover in Me." She went on to become successful in the United States and Japan, working with prominent vocalists and producers, such as Prince, Christopher Neil, Kenny Rogers, Luis Miguel, L.A. Reid and Babyface, and Nile Rodgers.

Easton was born Sheena Shirley Orr in the Scottish town of Bellshill, the youngest of six children to steel mill labourer Alex Orr and his wife Annie. She had two brothers (Robert and Alex) and three sisters (Marilyn, Annessa and Morag). Her earliest known public performance as a singer was at the age of five (in 1964), when she sang "Early One Morning" for her uncle and aunt and various relatives at the couple's 25th wedding anniversary celebration.^{[citation needed]}

Alwin "Al" Lopez Jarreau (born March 12, 1940) is a seven-time Grammy Award winning American jazz singer.

Jarreau was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the fifth of six children. His website refers to Reservoir, Inc., the name of the street where he lived. His father was a Seventh-Day Adventist Church minister and singer, and his mother was a church pianist. He and his family sang together in church concerts and in benefits, and he and his mother performed at PTA meetings.

He was student council president and Badger Boys State delegate for Lincoln High School, going on to Ripon College, where he also sang with a group called the Indigos. Jarreau graduated in 1962 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology. He went on to earn a master's degree in vocational rehabilitation from the University of Iowa, worked as a Rehabilitation Counselor in San Francisco and moonlighted with a jazz trio headed by George Duke.

In 1967, he joined forces with acoustic guitarist Julio Martinez. The duo became the star attraction at a small Sausalito night club called Gatsby's. This success contributed to Jarreau's decision to make professional singing his life and full-time career.