Turning Edo Maps into Data: Ritsumeikan University’s Digital Humanities MA

Kyoto may be famous for temples and tea, but it is also a quietly buzzing hub where coders, cartographers, and cultural historians cooperate every day. At Ritsumeikan University’s M.A. in Digital Humanities, faculty in the Art Research Center (ARC) teach students how to turn centuries‑old maps and writings about Edo (early‑modern Tokyo) into analyzable, searchable data. If you are the kind of person who enjoys both Python scripts and art museums, this program will feel tailor‑made.

A Degree Forged Where History Meets Data

Housed in the Graduate School of Letters’ Major in Informatics of Behavior and Culture, the track embraces coding, statistics, and archival science while keeping its feet firmly planted in the humanities. The curriculum spirals from theory to practice: students begin with “Frontiers of Digital Humanities,” then dive into electives such as “GIS for Humanities” and “Text Mining for Japanese Sources.” For details, see the official program page.

Because classes are conducted on the Kinugasa Campus in northwest Kyoto—five subway stops from the Imperial Palace—you will spend your days juxtaposing laptops against lanterns. Professors encourage fieldwork in local archives and museums, sharpening your Japanese while you digitize fragile woodblock prints.

学位	Master of Arts (Digital Humanities)
Standard Duration	2 years (April / September entry)
Main Language	Japanese ＋ selected courses in English
Campus	Kinugasa Campus, Kyoto
Annual Tuition*	≈ ¥1,000,000
Key Courses	Frontiers of DH, GIS for Humanities, Digital Archiving Practicum
Application Deadlines	Nov–Dec (for April) / May–Jun (for Sept)

Mapping Edo: Learning GIS Through 17th‑Century Tokyo

Edo‑ezu Meets ArcGIS

One signature practicum is built around the ARC project “Edo Period Map Goes Digital”. Students georeference the Ō Edo ezu—a hand‑drawn street map from 1843—onto modern coordinates, layering rivers, samurai estates, and fire‑watch towers with present‑day urban fabric. The result is an interactive web GIS that lets you toggle between centuries at will.

Skills You’ll Master

Beyond cartographic rectification, the course trains you to clean OCR output of classical Japanese, build PostGIS databases, and publish tiled map layers—market‑ready skills for jobs in cultural tech, tourism analytics, and urban planning alike.

Inside the ARC: Hands‑On Research & Big Data Culture

The Art Research Center (est. 1998) functions like an in‑house lab. Under the guidance of Professors Keiji Yano, Ryo Akama and Naomi Kawasumi, you will scan scrolls with 8K cameras in the morning and parse them with Python at night. Recent student‑led outputs include the interactive Surname Map of Japan, built on 40 million phone‑book entries, and a machine‑learning pipeline that reconstructs 3D temple reliefs from wartime photographs.

Weekly International ARC Seminars bring in guests from SOAS, Chicago, and the British Library, allowing you to workshop your thesis with global scholars before you even graduate.

From Virtual Kyoto to Global Careers

The Virtual Kyoto Legacy

Professor Yano’s award‑winning Virtual Kyoto project pioneered 4D GIS before Google Earth existed. As a graduate student you can plug your own code into this living platform—whether to model traffic flows for a smart‑city start‑up or to visualize tourism recovery after COVID‑19.

Where Alumni Land

Recent graduates have joined think‑tanks in Tokyo, GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) labs in Singapore, and Ph.D. programs in the U.S. Many credit the program’s balance of scholarly rigor and real datasets for their smooth transition into data‑driven careers.

Why Study Digital Humanities in Kyoto Now

Kyoto’s universities, start‑ups, and UNESCO heritage sites form a compact “learning city.” Within a 30‑minute bike ride you can interview a woodblock printer, attend a VR demo at a gaming studio, and sip matcha next to a 12th‑century scroll you just helped digitize. Few programs let you cross these worlds with academic credit.

If you dream of making the past clickable—and of turning that skill into a career—Ritsumeikan’s M.A. in Digital Humanities is waiting for you.