Croatia vs Japan

Japan is 6.7 times larger than Croatia — 377,915 against 56,594 km². Japan is 32 times more populous than Croatia — 123,366,734 against 3,876,200 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 4.8 times more densely populated than Croatia — 326 against 68 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 — Croatia on the right, Japan on the left.
• Different currencies: the Euro and the Japanese yen.
• Different continents — Europe and Asia.

Croatia

The Adriatic coast is about 1,780 km long as the crow flies but roughly 6,000 km including the 1,200-odd islands, islets and reefs, of which about fifty are inhabited. Plitvice is sixteen terraced lakes linked by waterfalls, dammed by travertine that the water itself deposits and which is still growing about a centimetre a year.

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.