Provinces of Japan

This is a map of the old administrative division of Japan into provinces. This division was in effect between the Kamakura period and the end of the Edo period, i.e. from the late 12th century to 1868. Note that Ezo (present Hokkaidō) was not a province, but is included anyway. Some of the islands northeast of Hokkaidō have been controlled by Russia since the end of WWII. The provincial division was later superseded but the present 47 prefectures.

Interactive features

The interactive features of this map are created with svg and javascript.

1. Provinces change color on hover
2. Regions (Gokishichidō) change color when hovering over region names
3. Province info is shown on hover
4. Kanji are highlighted on hover over province and vise versa
5. Kanji kan be hidden (one by one or all at once) to practice the names

Create your own selection of provinces.

Load a txt-file that only contains a row with comma separated names (no spaces) of provinces in romaji (ō as oo or ou and ū as uu), e.g.

iyo,oosumi,kyouto,kaga

To clear selection, reload the page.

Save image

To save a static image using FireFox, open console with F12 and type

:screenshot --selector "#svgMap" --dpr 4 --filename provincesOfJapan.png

This saves a png-file in the downloads folder. The "4" gives a higher resolution than the screen to improve quality, but can be changed depending on preference.

Updates

2022-04-05 Corrected kanji for ki in Kinai.
2022-09-27 Added Akita to the list of prefectures that make up Mutsu province (since the districts Kazuno and Kosaka in Akita belonged to Mutsu).