An atlas of Japan, in data.
Each plate is one uniquely-Japanese dataset — pulled from public records, drawn honestly, and made explorable. Every figure is downloadable as a CSV. New plates added over time.
9 plates · 812–2026 · 1,200+ years of record
Kyoto · 京都
Twelve centuries of cherry blossoms
The peak-bloom date of Kyoto's cherry trees has been written down since 812 AD — the longest continuous record of any natural event on Earth.
Peak bloom now lands ~10 days earlier than the millennial average — a clean climate fingerprint.
Omiwatari · 御神渡り
The god has not crossed in eight winters
Priests at Suwa's shrines have judged whether a ridge crosses Lake Suwa since 1443, and written down every answer they could. The ice is determinate for 567 of the 583 winters and unsettled for the other 16.
The lake froze almost every winter for two and a half centuries. Across the last 33 it has failed to freeze in 15 — and the shrine has declared no crossing eight winters running.
Edo · 江戸
260 warlords, leashed to one city
Every daimyō marched to Edo and back every other year, his family held hostage. Each domain sized by its rice income and tethered to the capital.
The march could swallow nearly half a domain's budget — Tosa spent 44% on it in 1688.
Micro-seasons · 七十二候
Japan named 72 seasons, then stopped watching
Japan's almanac splits the year into 72 five-day micro-seasons, each with a poetic name and its own words. The weather agency tracked many of the phenomena they name — until a 2021 cut.
Of the kō still on record, cherry now blooms earlier and the maples colour ~20 days later than in 1953 — the calendar drifting out of sync with the climate.
Eki · 駅
Watch Japan's railways bloom
Every railway station in Japan, dropped onto the map in the year it opened — 150 years of a network filling in, from the first line of 1872.
The map grew fastest in the 1910s–20s — most of Japan's stations opened long before the bullet train.
Fujimi · 富士見
Tokyo saw Mt. Fuji 22 mornings in 1965. In 2023, 170.
Since 1963 a school rooftop in Kichijoji has looked for Mt. Fuji every morning at 9 and written down whether it showed. The Kofu weather office has dated its first snow by eye since 1894 — and stopped in 2025.
An American teacher counted about 100 clear mornings from Hongō in 1877. Tokyo did not see that many again until 1999.
Namae · 名前
The 36 years every girl's name ended in 子
The ten most popular boys' and girls' names for every birth year since 1912, drawn as one register — 114 columns of ten ranks, with every name ending in 子 inked in indigo.
From 1921 to 1956 not one name in the girls' top ten ended in anything else. In the same 114 years, exactly one name — 葵, in 2016 — ever appears on both lists.
Sentō · 銭湯
Tokyo has lost 84% of its sentō since 1968. The rest are getting busier.
Tokyo’s count of public bathhouses since the 1968 post-war peak, told as a scroll story: a crowd of bathers, the bathhouses they gather at, and one real bathhouse, Kosugiyu, through the decades. The governor caps an adult bath at 600円, 3円 under the city’s own cost estimate, and nine of Tokyo’s 26 cities have no sentō at all.
Visits per bathhouse, from the city’s own totals: 37,100 a year in 2013, 50,800 in 2025. Total visits, 21.2 million, are still below 2019’s 23.4 million.
Randoseru · ランドセル
The year red stopped being a girl's colour
For 70 years a first-grader's satchel came in two colours: red for girls, black for boys. Nine years of purchase data show the binary breaking into a spectrum.
Red fell from the #1 girls' colour to #5 in six years, overtaken even by light brown.
These maps are made by the people behind JIVX, which turns a fascination with Japan into the language itself — short daily sentences, graded the way a teacher would, not flashcards.
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