Iran vs Japan

Iran is 4.4 times larger than Japan — 1,648,195 against 377,915 km². Japan is 1.3 times more populous than Iran — 123,366,734 against 92,417,681 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 5.8 times more densely populated than Iran — 326 against 56 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 — Iran on the right, Japan on the left.
• Different currencies: the Iranian rial and the Japanese yen.

Iran

The Lut Desert has recorded the highest land surface temperatures ever measured from orbit, around 80 °C. Iran is largely a high plateau ringed by mountains — the Zagros and the Alborz, where Damavand reaches 5,610 m, the highest volcano in Asia. The qanat, an underground irrigation tunnel, has been used here for around 3,000 years.

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.