Denmark vs Japan

Japan is 8.8 times larger than Denmark — 377,915 against 43,094 km². Japan is 21 times more populous than Denmark — 123,366,734 against 6,009,169 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 2.3 times more densely populated than Denmark — 326 against 139 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 — Denmark on the right, Japan on the left.
• Different currencies: the Danish krone and the Japanese yen.
• Different continents — Europe and Asia.

Denmark

Denmark proper is a peninsula plus 406 islands, about 70 of them inhabited, and no point is more than 52 km from the sea. The highest natural point is Møllehøj at 170 m. Including Greenland and the Faroe Islands, the Kingdom of Denmark spans more than 2.2 million km².

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.