Japan vs Palestine

Japan is 61 times larger than Palestine — 377,915 against 6,220 km². Japan is 23 times more populous than Palestine — 123,366,734 against 5,413,596 people.

Side by side

Population density

Palestine is 2.7 times more densely populated than Japan — 870 against 326 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 — Japan on the left, Palestine on the right.
• Different currencies: the Japanese yen and the Israeli new shekel.

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.

Palestine

The territory is in two separate parts: the West Bank, about 5,860 km², and the Gaza Strip, about 360 km². The West Bank includes the northern shore of the Dead Sea, the lowest exposed land on Earth at roughly 430 m below sea level. Jericho, in the Jordan Valley, is among the oldest continuously inhabited settlements known, with remains going back around 11,000 years.

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.