The cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are situated on which of the following islands?

Correct — C, Honshu and Kyushu respectively. Hiroshima stands at the head of the Seto Inland Sea in the Chugoku region, which is the western end of Honshu, Japan's largest island. Nagasaki faces the East China Sea from the western coast of Kyushu, the southernmost of the four main islands and the one nearest the Asian mainland. The pairing is easy to fix in memory through Nagasaki's history: it was the single port through which the Tokugawa shogunate allowed Dutch trade for two centuries, and a port serving China and Europe had to sit at the far south-west of the country.

• (a)Kyushu and Shikoku respectively — Both halves are wrong. Hiroshima is not on Kyushu, and Shikoku — the smallest of the four main islands — holds neither city; its own principal cities are Matsuyama and Takamatsu.
• (b)Kyushu and Honshu respectively — The right two islands in the wrong order. This is the option the examiner is fishing for, because a candidate who knows both islands are involved but has not fixed which city goes where has a fifty-fifty chance of picking it.
• (d)Honshu and Shikoku respectively — Places Hiroshima correctly and then moves Nagasaki to Shikoku. Shikoku faces the Inland Sea and the Pacific, not the East China Sea, and never had the mainland-facing position that made Nagasaki Japan's trading window.

Japan is an archipelago of thousands of islands, but four carry almost all of its land and people. From north to south they are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. Honshu is by far the largest and holds Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya and Hiroshima; Kyushu is the south-western island facing Korea and China, with Fukuoka, Kagoshima and Nagasaki; Shikoku is the smallest of the four and sits in the Seto Inland Sea between Honshu and Kyushu.

Every option here names two islands out of a set of three, so the item is really testing order, not recall of Japanese geography. Fix one city firmly and the rest follows: Hiroshima sits on the Inland Sea, which is Honshu's southern shore, so any option beginning with Kyushu is out at once, and that removes half the list. Then only the second half has to be decided, and Nagasaki's position as the port closest to the Asian mainland settles it on Kyushu.

• Japan's four main islands, north to south, are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu.
• Honshu is the largest and most populous, holding Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Hiroshima.
• Hiroshima lies on the Seto Inland Sea coast of western Honshu, in the Chugoku region.
• Nagasaki lies on the western coast of Kyushu, the main island nearest Korea and China.
• Dejima, an artificial island in Nagasaki harbour, was the only point of Dutch trade permitted by the Tokugawa shogunate from 1641 until the country reopened in the 1850s.

• Knowing both islands but reversing the order — three of the four options exploit exactly that.
• Confusing Shikoku with Kyushu; Shikoku is the small island inside the Inland Sea, Kyushu the large one in the south-west.
• Assuming the second-named city must sit on the second-largest island.

Asked as a plain two-place location match, so the exam is checking whether you can order Japan's four main islands and hang a city on each.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following is the largest of Japan's four main islands?

  • (a)Hokkaido
  • (b)Honshu
  • (c)Shikoku
  • (d)Kyushu

  Answer(b) Honshu — it carries about three-fifths of Japan's land area and its largest cities, including Tokyo, Osaka and Hiroshima.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Seto Inland Sea lies between Honshu and which two other main islands of Japan?

  • (a)Hokkaido and Kyushu
  • (b)Shikoku and Kyushu
  • (c)Hokkaido and Shikoku
  • (d)Kyushu and Okinawa

  Answer(b) Shikoku and Kyushu — the Inland Sea is enclosed by Honshu to the north, Shikoku to the south and Kyushu to the west.