Release Date: Jan 2005

Editor: Lex Berman

Encoding: UTF-8

Description: These tables were constructed for use in a Japanese place name search engine on the CHGIS website:

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/search

They were compiled from the 1995 Japan Census. The x, y coordinates are estimated positions based on centroids from the UNEP / GRID data or other sources. Please bring any typographic errors or mistakes in the hierarchy to the attention of Lex Berman: mberman@fas.harvard.edu

Copyright: The datasets are released for academic use only. The provider is not responsibility for the accuracy or authority of the contents. Repackaging, distribution, or publication of the entire dataset is strictly prohibited without permission of the editor. Use of the dataset as the basis for new research, however, is encouraged, and there are no restrictions placed on the distribution of secondary analyses or research papers based in part on this data.

Explanation of the Tables: The JP95_MAIN table provides all the info for each record (in UTF-8 encoding). The records include each administrative unit from the municipality, township, or urban district levels, as well as their jurisdictional parents up to the top-level unit, Nihon.

In the accompanying table, JP95_PartOf, you will see on the left a column called CHILD_ID. This CHILD record will have the same unique ID number, CHILD_ID, that is called PT_ID in the main table. Moving to the right of the CHILD_NAME and CHILD_ID columns, you will find the ID number and names of the PARENT.

For example, you will find the CHILD record "Nishiku" with ID # JP95a1_23104. Then you would find that its PARENT is "Nagoyashi" JP95a1_0_ab. Similarly if you looked up "Nagoyashi" in the CHILD section, you would find it's PARENT is "Aichiken" JP95a1_0_aa. And the PARENT of "Aichiken" is "Nihon" JP95_0_aa.

The codes were constructed hierarchically, but with no additional semantic content. "Aichiken" happend to be the first KEN under Nihon beginning with the letter "a," so the prefix ended up as JP95a1. Similarly, "Akitaken," has JP95a2 as its prefix, and so on. There is no other meaning to the code numbers, but they can be sorted hierarchically.