"Lovers in Japan" is a song by British alternative rock band Coldplay. It was written by all members of the band for their fourth studio album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. The song is built around an introductory tack piano sound, then followed by chiming guitars and soaring choruses, supported by the pianos and rhythms that accompany the song's lyrics. The album version of "Lovers in Japan" also includes the track "Reign of Love".

It was released as a promotional radio single on 3 November 2008 and peaked at number 10 on the Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart. The song also charted at number 19 on Billboard's Adult Top 40 chart. "Lovers in Japan" was well received by music critics, who praised the track's general sound. Although the promotional single is seen as the fourth single from the album, the version on the single is the Osaka Sun Mix, which is featured on the Prospekt's March EP.

When asked about the development of the song, during a track-by-track reveal, drummer Will Champion said:

We were in a studio in New York, this place called the Magic Shop, and it had this thing called a tack piano there, which sounds like an old honky-tonk piano, where you put little tacks in the hammers, so it sounds like more of a harpsichord almost. And so we wanted to use that kind of sound, but we didn't have a tack piano, so rather than sample it, we went and bought an old piano from the shop up the road from our studio, and we bought a load of tacks, and me and Guy and Jon spent a couple of hours pushing tacks into the piano hammers.

On Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, "Lovers in Japan" transitions seamlessly into a second track entitled "Reign of Love". In an interview with Q magazine, bassist Guy Berryman explained that the band could not make up their minds about the track listing, as they had discussed that they wanted to keep the album concise with a total of ten tracks and an intended length of under 42 minutes. Champion further stated, "We just preferred to have less titles and more stuff. The album as a whole has got the most on it, but it’s the shortest. We wanted to make it almost impossible for you to not listen to it all in one go." In addition, vocalist Chris Martin revealed that the band had wanted to have a "two-in-one" song title, as American recording artist Justin Timberlake had done the same on his album FutureSex/LoveSounds (2006).

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