Japan vs Vietnam

Japan is 1.1 times larger than Vietnam — 377,915 against 331,210 km². Japan is 1.2 times more populous than Vietnam — 123,366,734 against 101,598,527 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is slightly more densely populated, by 6.4% — 326 against 307 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, Vietnam on the right.
• Different currencies: the Japanese yen and the Vietnamese đồng.

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.

Vietnam

Long and narrow: about 1,650 km from north to south and under 50 km wide at the waist. Hang Sơn Đoòng in Phong Nha is the largest known cave passage in the world, big enough to hold a New York block of 40-storey buildings, with its own river, jungle and clouds. Hạ Long Bay holds roughly 1,600 limestone karst islands.

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.