According to new digital mapping by the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI), there are 14,125 islands in Japanese territory, more than double the official number of 6,852 used since a report by the Japanese Coast Guard in 1987.
The GSI this week emphasized that the revised figure did not alter the total area of land under Japanese control. Rather, it represented improvements in surveying technology and the level of precision in the maps used for the count.
Although there is no international consensus on how to count islands, it was stated that the survey employed the same size criterion as the one conducted 35 years prior. All naturally occurring land areas with a radius of at least 100 meters (330 feet) were counted.
Any artificially reclaimed land was not included in the updated total.
The islands which surround Japan have been objects of several territorial disputes throughout decades, such as those over the currently Russian-held Kuril islands and the East China Sea Senkaku Islands, to which Beijing challenges its claim.