Research Guide for East Asian Studies

Center for Geographical Analysis at Harvard: supports a wide range of scholarly research projects that apply spatial analysis. The Center has permanent professional staff who can guide and support complex projects across Harvard.

Harvard Geospatial Library: is a place to search for and download many types of geospatial data. 

Harvard Map Collection: new maps, old maps, and spatial data with expert librarians to help you bring them to life in research and teaching.

The Harvard WorldMap Project: WorldMap is an open source web mapping system that is currently under construction. It is built to assist academic research and teaching as well as the general public and supports discovery, investigation, analysis, visualization, communication and archiving of multi-disciplinary, multi-source and multi-format data, organized spatially and temporally. 

Library of Congress - Maps Collection: The Library of Congress Geography and Map Division has digitized a number of modern and historical maps and made them available to the public. 

China Historical GIS (Geographic Information System) (CHGIS) :Ongoing project to create a database of historical administrative units for different periods of Chinese history. Also provides a free, base GIS platform for researchers to use for spatial analysis, temporal statistical modeling, and representation of selected historical units as digital maps. See also the companion Fudan University site.

Chinese Civilization in Time and Space: Created by the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, this system aims to construct an integrated GIS-based application infrastructure allowing the integration of materials related to Chinese civilization during the imperial period (222 BCE – 1911 CE) in spatial and temporal frameworks.   It allows individual researchers to download map layers and contribute their results to the database. It also provides searching for information on historical place names, the Bibliography of Chinese Local Gazetteers, and the 輿圖要錄 from Beijing Library. 

IGCS - Geography (China WWW VL - Internet Guide for Chinese Studies): Extensive list of annotated links to China-related geographic resources, including a large map section.

The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI)

Topographic Map of Japan, 1/25,000 scale: Offered by the Geographical Survey Institute; Map of Japan in 1/25,000 scale is viewable.

JapanMap Created by Lex Berman originally for 2011 Japan disaster, JapanMap allows to view Japan with many layered information such as nuclear power plants, railway network, local fire stations.

Japanese Historical Maps, UC Berkely

Japanese Maps of Tokugawa Era 

Historical Maps of Asia, Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas at Austin

Complete Survey of the Japanese Coast The first geographical survey maps of Japan, made by Tadataka Ino, and often known as the Ino maps . This site provides digital images of 43 sheets, as well as options to view the entire map (some sheets have been lost) and to zoom in. There is also a comprehensive geographical name index including old, modern, and natural place names. Created by the National Diet Library.

E-Kyujanggak: Old Maps : a website that offers digitized collections of the Kyujanggak Institute of Seoul National University. For more information on E-Kyujanggak, see the entry under Full-text databases.

Sea of Korea Digital Archive: The Sea of Korea Maps Digital Archive consists of original old maps, dating from 1606 to 1895, in English, French, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Latin, German and Russian. Held by the University of Southern California Library, this archive includes maps both of Korea specifically and of the broader East Asian region.

East Asia - Images of Early Maps on the Web -- Map History / History of Cartography: THE Gateway to the Subject: Part of the WWW-Virtual Library: History. Provides links to collections of maps of Korea with brief descriptions of each, as well as maps of Asia more broadly.