Japan vs Singapore

Japan is 526 times larger than Singapore — 377,915 against 719 km². Japan is 20 times more populous than Singapore — 123,366,734 against 6,111,175 people.

Side by side

Population density

Singapore is 26 times more densely populated than Japan — 8,500 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

• Different currencies: the Japanese yen and the Singapore dollar.

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.

Singapore

A city-state on one main island plus about sixty smaller ones, and it has grown roughly a quarter since 1965 by reclaiming land from the sea. The port is one of the busiest in the world by tonnage. Changi Airport's Jewel holds a 40 m indoor waterfall, the tallest of its kind.

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.