TOKYO — Japan is an archipelago of 14,125 islands, according to a 2023 recount by the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan, which doubled the old official figure by counting with modern digital maps.
Four islands — Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku — account for most of the country’s land and nearly all of its 124 million people, by the population estimates of the Statistics Bureau of Japan. Honshu, the largest, is home to Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto.
14.1kislands in Japan, by the 2023 count of the Geospatial Information Authority
Hokkaido lies to the north across the Tsugaru Strait; Shikoku and Kyushu lie to the south-west, and the Ryukyu Islands, Okinawa among them, curve on towards Taiwan.
