Place profile

Okinawa Main Island

Area, population and population density of Okinawa Main Island, with reference dates, geographic scope, official sources and an outline preview.

Compare this place
Area
1,208.5 km²

Reference date:

Population
1,352,975

Reference date:

Population density
1,119.6 people/km²

Calculated from the population and area above; their reference dates may differ.

On a familiar scale
≈ 1.12 × Changhua County

The closest rung on the Taiwan reference ladder; see the sources below.

Land per resident
893 m² of land per resident

The inverse of population density, from the same area and population figures.

Outline of Okinawa Main Island
The outline is fitted to this frame, not a map for measuring distances. Outlying islands may make the main landmass appear smaller.

Scope and definitions

The main island of Okinawa, not the whole prefecture. Area is the island's own coastline, so bridge-connected satellites such as Yagaji, Henza and Sesoko are counted separately by the mapping authority. The prefectural population survey does the opposite: it reports only islands not linked by bridge, so those satellites are folded into this figure. The density shown is therefore about 2% high; a like-for-like denominator would be roughly 1,237 km². The count is the resident register, which includes foreign residents but not US military personnel stationed on the island.

Average administrative density does not describe population distribution in every neighborhood. Compare population definitions and reference dates alongside the numbers.

Place guide

How should this Okinawa Main Island profile be read?

This page covers Okinawa Main Island itself, with an area of 1,208.49 km² measured along the island’s own coastline as of 2026-04-01 and a population of 1,352,975 as of 2025-01-01. Okinawa Prefecture, already on this site, is the wider unit.

Area and population disagree about the bridge islands

The mapping authority counts Yagaji, Henza, Miyagi, Kouri, Sesoko, Hamahiga and Ikei as separate islands, so they sit outside the 1,208.49 km². The prefectural population survey reports separately only those islands not linked by bridge, so the residents of those same satellites are folded into the population shown here.

The two definitions therefore move in opposite directions, and the displayed density comes out about 2% high. A like-for-like denominator would be roughly 1,237 km². The area date and the population date are also 15 months apart.

Island against prefecture

Okinawa Prefecture is 2,282.11 km² with 1,467,065 people. The main island is therefore a little over half the prefecture’s land but holds most of its people, which is why the two pages produce very different densities.

Neither level is more correct than the other. The prefecture page answers an administrative question, and this page answers a single-island one, so the choice should follow the question being asked.

Data sources

Outline source: © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL · source feature

Read the methodology and data notes

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