Chile vs Japan

Chile is 2.0 times larger than Japan — 756,102 against 377,915 km². Japan is 6.2 times more populous than Chile — 123,366,734 against 19,859,921 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 12 times more densely populated than Chile — 326 against 26 people per km². Density is where area and population interact, and it often reverses the impression the headline figures give — a large country with a small population can feel emptier than a small crowded one by an enormous margin.

Practical differences

• They drive on opposite sides — Chile on the right, Japan on the left.
• Different currencies: the Chilean peso and the Japanese yen.
• Chile spans 3 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — South America and Asia.

Chile

About 4,300 km from north to south and averaging only around 177 km wide — one of the most elongated countries on Earth. The Atacama in the north is the driest non-polar desert in the world, and some weather stations there have never recorded rain. That dryness and altitude is why most of the world's large optical telescopes are built here.

Japan

A 2023 government survey using digital mapping counted 14,125 islands, more than double the long-quoted figure of 6,852. About three-quarters of the land is mountain, so nearly everyone lives on a narrow band of coastal plain. Japan sits where four tectonic plates meet and records a fifth of the world's magnitude-6-and-above earthquakes.

Neutral facts only. Nothing here addresses politics, government, economics or which country is preferable in any respect — population is the one figure that dates, and it carries its year.