If my translations don't make any sense at all please ignore them, I have extremely weak Japanese translation skills and I am using an auto-translator. "Japanese" by its self is commonly an adjective and describes something else (a noun). (I think might be translated as 物事に対する日本の影響) Japanese culture - (日本文化) Japanese music - (日本の音楽) Japanese people - (日本人) Japanese electronics - (日本の電子) "The Japanese" would refer to a group of something influenced or coming from Japan. If there is not a noun following the word "Japanese" in the sentence it would generally mean "Japanese People" (I believe as in 日本人) The Japanese music I listen to is nice. - can be expanded as "a specific group of music I listen to, which is Japanese (Japanese influenced or coming from Japan), is nice". (Maybe: 私が聴く日本の音楽はいいです ) or The Japanese sure know how to party! - "the Japanese" here is meant to imply "Japanese people" and would be understood as the people of Japan or people coming from Japan. (I think like 日本人は確かにパーティする方法を知っている！) However, I would recommend caution referring to whole groups of people like "The Americans", "The Japanese" or "The Africans" as it has a habit of sounding racist or discriminatory in many contexts to English speakers. (works like "other people" 余人 or gaijin 外人 to separate people into groups in order to pass judgments). Just keep in mind than it refers to a group "collectively" and that can be taken either way depending on the listener even if you don't mean anything bad or think you are saying it that way. I just hope my rough attempts at getting the right meaning from the automatic translator worked as I wanted it to. I converted it to Japanese and back and they still made sense to me, but that doesn't mean it makes sense in Japanese.

Japanese = the language the Japanese = the people Do you speak Japanese? The Japanese work too hard! Basta!