Japan vs Pakistan

Pakistan is 2.1 times larger than Japan — 796,095 against 377,915 km². Pakistan is 2.1 times more populous than Japan — 255,219,554 against 123,366,734 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is slightly more densely populated, by 1.8% — 326 against 321 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 Pakistani rupee.

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.

Pakistan

Five of the world's fourteen 8,000 m peaks stand in northern Pakistan, including K2 at 8,611 m. Outside the polar regions, this is the most heavily glaciated place on Earth: the Karakoram holds several glaciers over 50 km long, among them Siachen and Baltoro. The Indus runs about 3,200 km from Tibet to the Arabian Sea.

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.