Island
Honshu
Natural Earth’s outline of Honshu measures about 225,000 km² (86,900 mi²), the 6th largest of the 81 islands on sizeversus, and about the same size as Laos.
200 km
- Laos
- Honshu
The numbers
- 225,000km²Area, measured86,900 mi² · Natural Earth outline
- 228,000km²Area, publishedWikidata · agrees within 2%
The area is measured from the outline drawn above, on the WGS84 ellipsoid; the published figure is shown beside it, and a water body is kept only if the two are within 10%.
What the numbers say about Honshu
- Greenland (island), the largest of the 81 islands ranked on sizeversus, is 9.65× the size of Honshu; Honshu ranks 6th.
- Honshu sits between Baffin Island (509,000 km²) and Victoria Island (220,000 km²) in the ranking.
- Counted as a country, Honshu would be larger than 129 of the 212 countries listed on sizeversus and would rank 84th by area, between Laos (228,000 km²) and Guyana (211,000 km²).
- It is larger than 40 of the 51 US states and districts (the biggest of them is Minnesota, 225,000 km²) and smaller than 11.
- It is larger than 22 of the 31 provinces and regions of China (the biggest of them is Hunan, 211,000 km²) and smaller than 9.
- The closest US state is Minnesota (225,000 km²): Honshu is about the same size as Minnesota.
- On a standard web map (Web Mercator), a place at 37°N is drawn about 1.6× too large in area, so Honshu looks bigger there than it is.
- Laid out flat, Honshu stretches about 893 km north to south and 994 km east to west.
- Wikidata’s published figure of 228,000 km² agrees with our measured 225,000 km², to within 2%.
About the same size as
Countries
Where it lies
Natural Earth’s outlines of Japan contain or lie within 4 km of the outline of Honshu. That is what its geometry says, and it is not a statement about who owns the water or where any border runs in it.
Where Honshu ranks
Honshu is the 6th largest of the 81 islands on sizeversus, ranked by measured area.
Compare Honshu
Share this outline
Sources and method
- Outline
- Natural Earth, 1:10m Geography Regions (geography_regions_polys), public domain (Geography Regions (geography_regions_polys)). Outlines of lakes are drawn at 1:10 million.
- Boundary
- A lake or a sea has no legal boundary of its own. The outline is a cartographic one, and the page says so by showing the measured area beside the published one.
- Area basis
- Measured outline: computed on the WGS84 ellipsoid from the full-detail outline and shown rounded. Published figure: Wikidata (CC0), fetched 2026-11-11. An outline is kept within 10% of the published figure and matched to other places automatically within 5%.
- Shore
- Countries whose Natural Earth outline contains or comes close to the water's outline; computed, not a statement of ownership.
- Drawing
- Each outline is projected with an equal-area projection centred on its own centroid, so areas stay true and two can be laid over each other.
- Data built
- 2026-11-11