Gazetteer of Japan (地名集日本)

日本語解説記事 (Commentary article in Japansese)

Japanese place name dictionary, in CSV and JSON formats.

Interactive visualization: Gazetteer of Japan (地名集日本) / Sorami Hisamoto | Observable

Originally compiled by Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI): 地名集日本（GAZETTEER OF JAPAN) | 国土地理院 (PDF, retrieved 2022-12-22).

This repository is not affiliated with GSI.

License

When you use these data, please cite the source (GSI), and explicitly state that the content has been edited.

Example:

Data created by editing "Gazetteer of Japan" by Geospatial Information Authority of Japan.
Source: https://www.gsi.go.jp/kihonjohochousa/gazetteer.html

See GSI website's Term of Use for more details.

You do not need to cite this repository (though I would appreciate it if you do so). I would be happy to hear from you if you create some cool stuff with this data 🥳

Data

CSV: gazetteer-of-japan.csv

kanji,kana,roman,lat,lng,class
網走川,あばしりがわ,Abashiri Gawa,44.017,144.283,River
網走湖,あばしりこ,Abashiri Ko,43.967,144.183,Lake
網走市,あばしりし,Abashiri Shi,44.017,144.267,Municipality
安倍川,あべかわ,Abe Kawa,34.933,138.400,River
我孫子市,あびこし,Abiko Shi,35.867,140.033,Municipality
安平町,あびらちょう,Abira Cho,42.767,141.817,Municipality
安平川,あびらがわ,Abira Gawa,42.617,141.733,River
安房峠,あぼうとうげ,Abo Toge,36.200,137.583,Pass
阿武町,あぶちょう,Abu Cho,34.500,131.467,Municipality
...

JSON: gazetteer-of-japan.json

[
  {
    "kanji": "網走川",
    "kana": "あばしりがわ",
    "roman": "Abashiri Gawa",
    "lat": 44.017,
    "lng": 144.283,
    "class": "River"
  }
]

Columns

• kanji: The official name
• kana: Name in kana format
• roman: Name in romanized format
• lat: Latitude (decimal degrees, 3 decimal places)
• lng: Longitude (decimal degrees, 3 decimal places)
• class: Classification of the place
  • Municipality: prefecture, city, town, village
  • Populated area: Populated area
  • Mountain: mountain, hill
  • Pass: pass (mountain pass)
  • Cape: cape, beach
  • River: river, stream, irrigation channel
  • Lake: lake, marsh, swamp, pond
  • Sea Area: sea, bay, strait, channel
  • Undersea feature: ridge, seamount, seamounts, plateau, trench, trough, basin, canyon, bank, terrace, gap, seachannel
  • Island: island, islet, rock
  • Extensive nature feature: mountains, plain, peninsula, upland, islands, islets

Be aware that there are different places with the same name. For example, there are 7 rows with the name 駒ヶ岳 (Komagatake). See stats.ipynb for the list of duplicate names.

Stats

• Number of rows: 4,149
  • 4,123 rows in original PDF
  • plus 26 aliases
• Row counts per classification
  • Municipality: 1,794
  • Mountain: 593
  • Undersea feature: 439
  • River: 326
  • Island: 312
  • Cape: 182
  • Populated area: 182
  • Extensive natural feature: 115
  • Sea Area: 105
  • Lake: 51
  • Pass: 50

Code

See extract.ipynb for the details of preprocess steps.

• Latitude and longitude in the source are represented in "degrees" and "minutes" (no "seconds")
  • => I have converted them to decimal degrees (rounded to 3 decimal places)
  • e.g., 44°01' to 44.017
• kanji as images in the original PDF
  • For some rows, kanji is represented by image instead of string, as those characters are not available on computers
  • => I have replaced them by equivalent common characters
• Aliases
  • For some rows, aliases are written together in brackets
  • e.g., 烏帽子岳（乳頭山）, Eboshi Dake (Nyuto Zan)
  • => I haved splitted the string to create multiple rows