The total land space of the Japanese islands is about 142,000 square miles. As you can see from map 2 and map 3, it is a very small country when compared with the vast Asian mainland, or with the United States, where it is smaller than the single, although large, state of California. It seems even smaller when you realize how little of its land is useful for agriculture or housing, as we will discuss below. China, the United States, and a few other giants of the world are the unusual ones, however. Japan does not seem so small when compared with some of the nations of Western Europe. It is, for example, larger than Italy. (See map 4).
