Japan vs Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is 5.7 times larger than Japan — 2,149,690 against 377,915 km². Japan is 3.3 times more populous than Saudi Arabia — 123,366,734 against 36,973,555 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 19 times more densely populated than Saudi Arabia — 326 against 17 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, Saudi Arabia on the right.
• Different currencies: the Japanese yen and the Saudi riyal.

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.

Saudi Arabia

The Rub' al Khali, the Empty Quarter, is the largest continuous sand desert in the world at about 650,000 km² — bigger than France. Saudi Arabia has no permanent rivers or lakes at all, which is true of only a handful of countries. It holds roughly a sixth of the world's proven oil reserves.

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.