Iraq vs Japan

Iraq is 1.2 times larger than Japan — 438,317 against 377,915 km². Japan is 2.6 times more populous than Iraq — 123,366,734 against 47,020,774 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 3.0 times more densely populated than Iraq — 326 against 107 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 — Iraq on the right, Japan on the left.
• Different currencies: the Iraqi dinar and the Japanese yen.

Iraq

The Tigris and Euphrates run the length of the country and meet at Al-Qurnah to form the Shatt al-Arab. The Mesopotamian Marshes at their lower end are among the largest wetlands in western Eurasia. Uruk, on the Euphrates, was one of the first cities in the world.

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.