Japan vs Thailand

Thailand is 1.4 times larger than Japan — 513,120 against 377,915 km². Japan is 1.7 times more populous than Thailand — 123,366,734 against 71,619,863 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 2.3 times more densely populated than Thailand — 326 against 140 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 Thai baht.

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.

Thailand

Roughly 3,200 km of coastline on two separate seas, the Andaman and the Gulf of Thailand, joined only by the narrow Kra Isthmus. The country's full ceremonial name for Bangkok, Krung Thep Mahanakhon and the rest, is the longest place name in the world at 168 letters in transliteration.

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.