Japan 🇯🇵

Japan is a sovereign country in Eastern Asia, in the wider region of Asia. Unlike most entries, its formal name adds nothing to the short one. Its seat of government is Tokyo.

The land area is 377,930 km², which ranks it 63rd of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Zimbabwe and just ahead of Germany. That makes it a little larger than Germany.

The population is about 124.0 million, placing it 12th of 249 by population — between Mexico above it and Egypt below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 3rd of 8 in size and 2nd in population.

Japan has no land border with any country, which changes what "nearby" means. Measured centre to centre in a straight line, the closest other entry on this site is South Korea, roughly 940 km away. These are approximate distances between representative points, not the shortest crossing between two shorelines, so treat them as a sense of scale rather than a sailing chart.

Being surrounded by water rather than by neighbours pushes a country's relationships outward. Northern Mariana Islands and Guam sit in a different world region from Japan yet rank among its closest geographic company — the kind of pairing that only shows up once you stop thinking in continents.

No land border also means no land crossing: everything and everyone arrives by sea or by air. That single fact drives a lot of what follows on this page, from how goods reach the shops to why Japan's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Plotted on a globe it falls at 36.0° north, 138.0° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 4,008 km from the equator, in what geographers would call temperate latitudes.

Follow that same latitude east or west and you reach the United States, Syria and Tunisia — places that share its distance from the equator but little else.

There is no land frontier at all — every boundary it has is a coastline. That puts it among the 85 entries of 249 here with no land neighbours, a group made up mostly of islands and island groups.

Spread across 377,930 km², that works out at about 328 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. Half the entries in this dataset fall below roughly 91 per square kilometre.

Someone from Japan is a Japanese.

The one official language is Japanese. No other entry in this dataset lists Japanese, so on this list it stands alone.

Against Asia as a whole it is the 6th most populous of 50 entries, and it accounts for 7.5% of everyone living in Eastern Asia.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Japan ranks 63rd of 249 by area and 12th by population. That works out at 0.25% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 1.5% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Japan in the size ordering are Zimbabwe at 390,757 km² and Germany at 357,114 km², against Japan's 377,930 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Japan averages 328 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 42nd of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Japan does not have the Japanese yen to itself. It is one of 2 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is JPY, and the other one is listed below. A shared currency usually points at something real — a monetary union, a currency board, a former colonial administration, or a small economy pegging itself to a large neighbour's money — and it means a price quoted in JPY travels further than you might expect.

Japanese is listed for Japan and for no other entry on this site. A language confined to one country is unusual, and it is normally a sign of long isolation or of deliberate revival.

The currency is the Japanese yen (¥, JPY). It is issued for Japan alone.

Tokyo is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

Its internet country code is .jp. The international dialling code is +81. Standard country codes: jp and JPN.

It holds a seat at the United Nations, one of 192 entries here that do. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.

Zoom in from the world to Eastern Asia and Japan sits 2nd of 8 by population and 3rd by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is China just above and South Korea just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

China is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Eastern Asia has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇨🇳 China
• 🇰🇷 South Korea
• 🇨🇳 China