Japan Fieldwork: A Three-Dimensional Terrain Map

The “Japan Fieldwork” section isn’t built as a research list, but as a three-dimensional terrain map.

A map that breathes

The Japanese archipelago, rendered from real elevation data, with fieldwork sites landing precisely on their coordinates as glowing pins; each site raises a “pillar”—those visited, those that carry weight, stand tall and yellow, the rest short and white. Leader-line labels (in the style of endfield) automatically dodge one another, never overlapping.

From overview to single region

The top layer is an overview of all Japan: cards for the several fieldwork clusters (Ainu studies, Hokkaido development history, historical memory…) each connecting to their group of points on the map. Click in, and the camera drops into a single region (such as Hokkaidō), showing every point across that stretch. The whole thing is a reusable two-layer structure—swap in a different theme, and a new page grows out of it.

Editable on the fly

A drag-and-drop editor opens locally: pins, pillars, and labels can all be dragged into place directly, with the changes written back to the data file—no need to go back into the code and count coordinates.