Japan vs Taiwan

Japan is 11 times larger than Taiwan — 377,915 against 35,980 km². Japan is 5.2 times more populous than Taiwan — 123,366,734 against 23,600,776 people.

Side by side

Population density

Taiwan is 2.0 times more densely populated than Japan — 656 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, Taiwan on the right.
• Different currencies: the Japanese yen and the New Taiwan 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.

Taiwan

A mountainous island: 268 peaks rise above 3,000 m in an area smaller than Switzerland, and Yushan reaches 3,952 m. Taroko Gorge is cut about 19 km through marble. The island sits on the Ring of Fire and the Tropic of Cancer crosses it, so the south is tropical and the high interior gets snow.

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.