Since the transfer of the capital to Heian-kyo, Kyoto still lives its over 1,200 years of history. If we could see the transition of Kyoto across time and space, from the past, present, and into the future, what kind of landscape will be reflected in our eyes?

Keiji Yano is working on making a digital diorama by digitally archiving the space called Kyoto as a whole, based on geospatial information, such as maps and picture maps. In Virtual Kyoto, which he first worked on in 2002, he tried to reconstruct the townscape of modern Kyoto in three dimensions on a computer, by using a Geographic Information System (GIS), which was state-of-the-art at the time, and Virtual Reality (VR) technology. “In addition to producing a 1:25000 scale three-dimensional topographic map using GIS software, I also added information obtained by measuring the heights of 400,000 buildings, and built a precise three-dimensional model of the urban area of modern Kyoto,” Yano explained. Virtual Kyoto provides fly-through and walk-through functions. These functions allow one to change their vantage points from one instant to another. You can be viewing Kyoto from the sky with a birds-eye view at one moment, then in the next moment be walking along the Shijo-dori Street, looking around the interior of the Minami-za (the primary kabuki theater in Kyoto) or the Kyo-machiyas (traditional Kyoto wooden townhouses), and so on. The Google Earth service started only in 2005. It is amazing to think about what Yano was able to achieve a few years before that. “A new academic field named ‘Digital Humanities’ that combines human studies and information technology, which traditionally did not have anything in common has become popular around the world in recent years,” Yano explained. Virtual Kyoto was precisely the forerunner in this.

In 2016, Yano published the Overlaying Maps of Modern Kyoto, which focuses on the Meiji Period until the end of the Second World War. It uses archives such as a “tentative topographic map (Kasei-zu)” from the middle of the Meiji Period, “city planning basic maps” from Taisho to early Showa periods, and an “official topographic map (Seishiki-zu)” published in 1912 (Taisho 1). The strong point of this web based map system is that one can display several maps as overlays over Google Maps. It is not possible to view maps of different scales, orientations, shapes, etc., from the same viewpoint by simply overlaying them as they are. Yano identified the position information (coordinates) of several points in each map and aligned the position of each point using the georeferencing functions so that the different maps can be displayed on the same screen. By changing the degree of transparency of the maps, it becomes possible to see through the maps and compare each one.

Two types of “large-scale maps of Kyoto City (Kyoto shi meisaizu)” that are extremely meaningful for academic research are also published in the Overlaying Maps of Modern Kyoto. One is a collection of 291 paper maps discovered at the Kyoto Prefectural Library and Archives (currently the Kyoto Prefectural Institute, Library, and Archives) in 2010. Although these maps were produced and published prior to 1927 (Showa 2), it is estimated that many entries continued to be made until a few years after the end of the war. Buildings in Kyoto City are depicted one by one, and color-coded according to the purpose of the building, such as shops or conventional residences, as well as the type of business of the establishment and the number of floors of the building. “However, an original version of these maps where no entries had been made, actually exists,” Yano says. They were the “large-scale maps of Kyoto City (Kyoto shi meisaizu)” comprised of 288 sheets discovered at the residence of the Hasegawa family in Minami Ward, Kyoto City in 2014. It has no coloration or retouches. Yano and others scanned these two types of drawings one at a time with high resolution, and aligned and synthesized them one by one using georeferencing. “We can compare the buildings in Kyoto City in the Taisho Period and the postwar period exquisitely by using the two detailed maps. It is also very interesting as research material,” Yano says.

The Digital Archive of the Historical City of Kyoto that Yano is aiming to produce includes not only three-dimensional space but also content such as literary works, paintings, and photographs, as well as intangible cultural assets such as festivals including the Gion Festival and traditional arts. Yano does not simply list them but has released them with geospatial information, such as maps, as a platform linked to a place. One of the recent achievements is the archiving of about 80,000 photographic negatives of the architecture historian Yutaka Kondo, who photographed Kyoto from the 1930s to the 1970s. They are collaborating with Kyoto Prefecture to scan the photographs that were donated to the Kyoto Prefectural Library and Archives, one by one. They have also identified location information from the photographs, and have constructed a system that allows users to view the photographs from the map. Approximately 50,000 pictures have already been released.

As part of this effort, Naomi Kawasumi has archived about 2,000 photographs of the Kyoto City Tram from around the 1960s. “We organized a research group, identified places reflected in the photographs with the collaboration of experts, and released those photographs and data with location information. There were some pictures which their location could not be identified. We also added a system that allows people from the outside to enter information into the published database,” Kawasumi says. Furthermore, the Kyoto Memory Map Project was launched, and memories of places and periods reflected in old photographs and maps are being collected and released as well.