Map of Japan

Japan is located in Asia. Its territory lies in the northern and eastern hemispheres, centred near 36.0° N, 138.0° E. It is an island nation and shares no land borders with any other country, so every approach to it is made by sea or by air. Within Asia, a continent of 49 countries bordered by the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, Japan is mapped here in full with its borders, capital and key facts.

Japan is an island state with no land borders. The nearest countries are reached across open water rather than over a shared frontier.

Japan covers about 377,930 km² (145,920 sq mi). That makes it the 62nd-largest country in the world by area and the 17th-largest in Asia, larger by area than 32 of the continent’s 49 countries.

It is home to a population of roughly 123,210,000, the 11th-largest in the world and the 6th-largest in Asia, accounting for about 2.6% of the continent’s people. With that land area, Japan has an average population density of about 326 people per km². Among the 49 countries of Asia it stands 6th by population and 17th by area.

The seat of government is Tokyo, and the official currency is the Japanese yen (JPY, ¥), and the main official language is Japanese. Traffic drives on the left, and the country observes the time zone UTC+09:00.

Japan carries the ISO country codes JP and JPN, dials on the international calling code +81 and uses the .jp, .みんな internet domain.

Japan has no land neighbours. It is an island nation, so the countries nearest to it are reached across open water rather than over a shared border. Its position at 36.0° N, 138.0° E places it about 3,996 km from the equator, in the northern and eastern hemispheres, within the wider region of Asia.

The interactive map above is centred on 36.0° N, 138.0° E and opens at zoom level 5, framing Japan within Asia. A marker pin sits at the country’s approximate geographic centre; drag the map or use scroll and pinch to move from a regional overview down to the streets of Tokyo. The map is drawn from OpenStreetMap data, the same open dataset used across this site, so place names, roads and coastlines stay consistent from one country to the next.

Japan lies about 3,996 km from the equator, in the northern and eastern hemispheres of the globe. As an island, its full extent is best seen by zooming out to take in the surrounding sea.

Japan keeps a single standard time zone, UTC+09:00. That figure is the country’s offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the modern reference that for everyday purposes matches Greenwich Mean Time, so local clocks sit +09:00 relative to UTC before any seasonal daylight saving change.

The official currency is the Japanese yen (JPY, ¥).

The official language is Japanese, which is what appears on signs, documents and many of the place labels you will see on the map.

For practical reference, vehicles drive on the left-hand side of the road, the international dialling code is +81 and websites commonly use the .jp, .みんな internet domain.

In short, Japan is an island nation in Asia, with no land borders. Its capital is Tokyo. Japan has a population of about 123,210,000 and covers around 377,930 km² (145,920 sq mi), ranking it 11th in the world by population and 62nd by area. The interactive map, facts table and questions on this page bring those details together in one place for Japan.

The flag of Japan features a crimson-red circle at the center of a white field.

The flag of Japan is shown above as an emoji, rendered by your device’s own font; see it alongside every other nation on the flags of the world page.