Japan vs Philippines

Japan is 1.3 times larger than Philippines — 377,915 against 300,000 km². Japan is slightly more populous, by 5.6% — 123,366,734 against 116,786,962 people.

Side by side

Population density

Philippines is 1.2 times more densely populated than Japan — 389 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, Philippines on the right.
• Different currencies: the Japanese yen and the Philippine peso.

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.

Philippines

An archipelago of 7,641 islands, of which about 2,000 are inhabited. The Philippine Trench off the east coast reaches 10,540 m, one of the deepest points in any ocean. The country sits in the most typhoon-exposed part of the planet and takes around twenty named storms a year.

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.