Japan vs Kenya

Kenya is 1.5 times larger than Japan — 580,367 against 377,915 km². Japan is 2.1 times more populous than Kenya — 123,366,734 against 57,532,493 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 3.3 times more densely populated than Kenya — 326 against 99 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

• Different currencies: the Japanese yen and the Kenyan shilling.
• Different continents — Asia and Africa.

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.

Kenya

The Great Rift Valley runs the length of the country, and the equator crosses it just north of Nairobi. Mount Kenya reaches 5,199 m and carries glaciers within 20 km of the equator. Lake Turkana in the north is the largest permanent desert lake in the world.

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.