Japan vs Panama

Japan is 5.0 times larger than Panama — 377,915 against 75,420 km². Japan is 27 times more populous than Panama — 123,366,734 against 4,571,189 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 5.4 times more densely populated than Panama — 326 against 61 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, Panama on the right.
• Different currencies: the Japanese yen and the Panamanian balboa.
• Different continents — Asia and North America.

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.

Panama

The canal is 82 km long and lifts ships 26 m up to Gatún Lake and back down, using gravity-fed fresh water rather than pumps. Because the isthmus curves, a ship going from the Atlantic to the Pacific travels roughly south-east. The Darién Gap is the only break in the 30,000 km Pan-American Highway.

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.