Japan vs Peru

Peru is 3.4 times larger than Japan — 1,285,216 against 377,915 km². Japan is 3.6 times more populous than Peru — 123,366,734 against 34,576,665 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 12 times more densely populated than Peru — 326 against 27 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, Peru on the right.
• Different currencies: the Japanese yen and the Peruvian sol.
• Different continents — Asia and South 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.

Peru

Peru holds the source of the Amazon and about sixty percent of its territory is Amazon basin, but most people live on the dry Pacific coast. Cotahuasi and Colca are among the deepest canyons in the world, both over 3,000 m. The Nazca lines, drawn on the coastal desert between about 500 BC and AD 500, cover some 450 km² and are only legible from the air or the surrounding hills.

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.