Introduction
Stanford University Libraries holds a large collection of Japanese military and imperial maps, referred to asgaihozu, or "maps of outer lands." These maps were produced starting in the early Meiji (1868-1912) era and the end of World War II by the Land Survey Department of the General Staff Headquarters, the former Japanese Army. The first charge was to map specific territories beyond Japan's borders. Over time the mapping efforts grew to including "mapping of interimperial boundaries, cadastral surveys of the colonies, and detailed drawings of strategic cities and fortifications." Geographically the Stanford maps cover a broad area including Japan, China, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, the Philippines, and beyond.
The Library is in the process of scanning and making available all of the maps in the collection. In order to quickly assess what we hold for each region, we have created an ArcGIS online interface to access each set. This portal allows you to search for the maps geographically through an index and then download the images at multiple resolutions. This guide provides access to the indexes, details the history of how the maps came to Stanford, and provides resources for further information about this corpus of material.
Thanks to Christopher Thiry at the Colorado School of Mines for his initial work on the shared index map project.
You can browse the entire cataloged collection in SearchWorks. The collection holds over 120 different sets, which will be released through the index viewer as the indexes are created.
Digital Index
The maps in the collection are best found by using our digital index to locate the region and specific map of interest. Indices have been created for each map set in the corpus.
Distribution of the Maps
Maps were distributed to libraries in the United States through the Army Map Service and the Library of Congress's Map Depository Program. Maps also came to Stanford directly from the Hoover Institute Tokyo Office in 1947 as part of the Wright Project. Dr. Shigeru Kobayashi has written a detailed text in Japanese about these maps entitled, Gaihozu: Teikoku Nihon no Ajia chizu.Dr. Kobayashi paper presented at the Stanford Symposium gives a detailed history of the maps in English entitled, Japanese Mapping of Asia-Pacific Areas, 1873-1945: An Overview.
List of known libraries that hold Japanese military and colonial maps produced up to the end of World War II:
| Academia Sinica, Taiwan | San Diego Public Library |
| California Academy of Sciences | Southern Methodist University |
| Carleton College | Stanford University |
| Claremont College | Tohoku University, Japan |
| Clark University | University of Arkansas |
| Cleveland Public Library | University of California, Berkeley |
| Gifu Prefectural Library, Japan | University ofChicago |
| Harvard University | University of Colorado |
| Kyoto University, Japan | University of Georgia |
| Library of Congress | University of Hawaii, Manoa |
| Louisiana State University | University ofIllinois |
| National Geographic Society | University of Iowa |
| National Library of Australia | University of Michigan |
| New York Public Library | University of New Mexico |
| Northwestern University | University of Oklahoma |
| Oberlin College | University ofPittsburgh |
| Ochanomizu University, Japan | University ofTexas |
| Oklahoma State Library | University of Washington |
| Oregon State University | University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, American Geographical Society Library |
| Osaka University, Japan | Washington State University |
| Princeton University | Yale University |
Resources
Numerous resources have been created in both print and electronic form to aid researchers in the use of the maps. Many of them are in Japanese. Below you'll find books, web resources, and conference proceedings related to the collection:
Japanese Imperial Maps as Sources for East Asian History (Conference Proceedings)
Stanford University held a symposium in October 2011 on the Gaihozu maps. The papers from that symposium appeared in Cross-Current: East Asian History and Culture Review.
Gaihozu Digital Archive from Tohoku University Library
This website, in both Japanese and English, provides index maps and images for the maps held at Tohoku University. One may search by an index map of the world, through a list of index data by region, and keyword searching (in Japanese). The images may be viewed but not downloaded. Included are a list of links to other Japanese institutions holding maps in their collections.
Kyoto Daigaku Sogo Hakubutsukan shuzo gaihozu mokuroku 2010 (Gaihozu held by Kyoto University Museum)
A detailed list of maps held at Kyoto University Museum.
See AlsoImperialism Interactive MapKyoto Daigaku Sogo Hakubutsukan shuzo gaihozu mokuroku 2005 (Gaihozu held by Kyoto University Museum)
A detailed list of the maps held at Kyoto University Museum.
Ochanomizu Joshi Daigaku shozo gaihozu mokuroku (Gaihozu held by Ochanomizu University)
A detailed list of the maps held at Ochanomizu University.
Tohoku Daigaku shozo gaihozu mokuroku (Gaihozu held by Tohoku University)
A detailed list of the maps held at Tohoku University.
Japanese Intelligence Symbols
Army Map Service technical manual #30 published in 1948.
Japanese Imperial Maps Presentation Univ. of Michigan 2016
Dr. Kobayashi presented a talk at the University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies on October 27, 2016 entitled, "Japanese Imperial Maps: Collections of Gaihozu in Japan and in the United States."
Gaihōzu : Teikoku Nihon no Ajia chizu
History and information about this set of maps by the preeminent scholar in the field, Dr. Shideru Kobayashi.
Kindai Nihon no kaigai chiri jōhō shūshū to shoki gaihōzu
Dr. Kobayashi's newest book on this set of maps.
A Hidden Collection Emerges: German & Japanese WWII Captured Maps from UC Berkeley, Stanford Library
Virtual presentation by Julie Sweetkind-Singer, Stanford; Susan Powell, UC Berkeley; Heiko Mühr, UC Berkeley
Acquisition of World War II Captured Maps: A Case Study
At the end of World War II, United States Army officers located large troves of maps in Germany and Japan. These materials were shipped back to the United States and deposited with the Army Map Service (AMS). The AMS created a repository service to distribute the captured maps to libraries across the United States eventually sending them to a subset of thirty-five geographically dispersed institutions. While numerous libraries processed these materials, many did not, including the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who made the decision to donate their maps to Stanford University for cataloging and scanning. The majority of the maps were duplicative, but twenty percent of the corpus were either new sets or missing sheets from existing sets. Analyzing these collections allows librarians and scholars to understand the scope of the mapping carried out by the Germans and Japanese prior to and during the war. It also provides a framework to decide if a library should allocate processing, cataloging, and digitization resources for such unprocessed collections.
