Japan has recounted its islands – and discovered it has 7,000 more than it previously thought.
Digital mapping by the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI) recently found there to be 14,125 islands in Japanese territory, more than double the figure of 6,852 that has been in official use since a 1987 report by Japan’s Coast Guard.
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However, the GSI this week stressed that the new figure reflected advances in surveying technology and the detail of the maps used for the count – it did not change the overall area of land in Japan’s possession.
It said that while there is no international agreement on how to count islands, it had used the same size criterion as the previous survey 35 years ago.
That entailed counting all naturally occurring land areas with a circumference of at least 100 meters (330 feet).
The new number does not include any artificially reclaimed land.
