Does Bangladesh have more people than Japan?

Japan is famous for crowded trains and giant cities, so it can come as a surprise that Bangladesh has far more people: about 176 million against 123 million in the World Bank’s 2025 estimates, about 1.4 times as many. Bangladesh also has less than half of Japan’s land, about 130,000 km² against 365,000 km², which makes it about four times as densely populated: around 1,350 people per km² of land against 338. The feeling of crowding in Japan comes from its cities; in Bangladesh, high density is the national average. The two populations are moving in different directions, too. Japan’s statistics office recorded a fall of about 600,000 people in 2023 alone. In the population ranking of our deck, Bangladesh is eighth in the world and Japan twelfth.