Japan Map: 24 Maps of Dam Cards, Torii Codes and Lost Railways

More than 228,000 maps on MapIndex lie in Japan, and the best are the work of people who cannot stop counting. Someone gave a classification code to each of 5,566 torii gates. Someone scored 1,065 level crossings for how remote they feel. A dam-card hunter’s pickup guide runs past 1,100 points, with opening hours for each. Others record what the country would rather forget: stones that warn of tsunamis, forts that never fired, and railways that closed or were never built.

Dam Card Map: Where to Collect Every Japanese Dam

Dams in Japan come with a collectible card, and this map shows where each one is handed out: the office address, the hours (some include weekends and holidays, some close from November) and the map code for the car navigation. Takizato Dam has two pickup points, a management office and a campground reception that only opens from late April. Over 1,100 points, sorted by region from Hokkaido south, plus a layer of unofficial ones.

Objects

1,1111,111 points

Countries

JapanCanadaLaos

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Tsunami Stone Map: Warnings Carved Along the Sanriku Coast

Hundreds of stones, each tagged with the wave it records: the 1896 Meiji Sanriku tsunami, the 1933 Showa Sanriku tsunami, the 1960 Chile tsunami or an Edo-period drowning. Inscriptions are quoted in the point names, among them “stay alert against sudden tsunami” in Taneichi, and almost every stone links a photograph. A few are flagged as not tsunami stones at all, and some are marked “location not identified”.

Objects

299299 points

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Torii Gate Map: A Classified Survey of 5,566 Gates

Every gate carries a code like B14-AC’lBa-2D, followed by its type (a Kyoto-style myōjin torii, say), material, reading, old province and county, shrine rank, and whether the mapmaker has visited. Layers follow the ancient provinces and highway circuits, stars mark gates of special note, three dots mark gates that have vanished. The Kibune shrine’s three gates are all logged separately, and the entries were still being updated in May 2026.

Objects

5,5665,545 points, 21 lines

Countries

JapanRussian FederationUnited Statesand 10 more

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Level Crossing Map: Rated for How Remote They Are

Each of 1,065 railway crossings gets two scores out of ten, remoteness and ease of access, plus the line and the crossing type. A crown goes to crossings that score a perfect ten, and the notes are the photographers’ remarks: one is near a station, another can only be reached by detouring around a school. It reads like the ranking of secret stations, applied to the places where the tracks meet the road.

Objects

1,0651,065 points

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Yokai Map: Japan's Monsters and the Old Books They Come From

More than 11,000 points, and the notes name the source for each: the Encyclopedia of Japanese Yokai, Ugetsu Monogatari, the Kojiki, or an Edo-period collection of strange tales. Ushiku marsh is pinned for its kappa, while Izumo Taisha collects three separate entries, among them a cloud that appeared when the shrine was moved. A map to browse as a bibliography as much as a place.

Objects

11,23211,232 points

Countries

JapanChinaGermanyand 83 more

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Tsunami Height Map: The 1707 Hoei Wave in Kochi

A 1707 tsunami rebuilt to the metre from village chronicles. At Kannoura the map reads the records (“the sea reached the mountain, only three temples and three sailors’ houses stood”) and then tests them: 4–5 m at one point, 5.5–6 m at another, 7.5 m at the Manpuku temple, whose stairs a priest said the wave had climbed. The author cites each paper, and in April 2014 went out to measure with a local historian.

Objects

200200 points

Countries

Japan

Made with

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War Ruins Map: Forts, Radar Sites and Aircraft Shelters

A field-visitor’s notes on what is left. At Sada Cape in the Hōyo Fortress, battery no. 4 was finished in 1945, in time for a homeland battle that never came, and now has a replica gun and a viewing platform; a shell-polishing shed was gone by the May 2019 visit, though Street View still showed it that September. The 152 entries say whether each site can be entered and how damaged it is.

Objects

152152 points

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Abandoned Japan Map: The Ruins That Are Already Gone

A map of urbex sites that no longer exist, with an epitaph on each: Aqua Resort in Ishikawa (“12-1987 to 10-2008, demolished and replaced by a pachinko parlor”), Ainball, a pachinko hall and bowling alley “reduced to rubble in 2011”, Awagasaki Amusement Park (1925–1941, converted into an ammunition factory, one gate seems to be left). Many entries link the Abandoned Kansai blog that documented them before the bulldozers came.

Objects

111111 points

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Red-Light District Map: Tohoku's Licensed Quarters, About 1930

A hobbyist’s survey of the old licensed districts of northern Japan, drawn as polygons with a count of brothels and women for each: Ōminato 10 and 30, Aomori 21 and 140, rebuilt in Asahi-machi after a fire on 3 May 1910. The mapmaker writes in the first person, recalling a night train and a walk through snow on a first visit to Aomori, and flags positions that are only guessed.

Objects

103103 areas

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Abandoned Railway Map: Closed and Never-Built Lines in Kanto

Ten layers separate what closed from what was never built: private, national and JR lines, freight and military spurs, forest and mine lines, tramways and cable cars. The history is on nearly every line. The Narita Railway’s Tako Line, 20.80 km, opened in July 1911 on 600 mm track laid by the Railway Regiment, was suspended in January 1944 and abolished in October 1946; its Tako–Yōkaichiba section now carries a national road.

Objects

3,3661,829 points, 1,471 lines, 66 areas

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Fortress Boundary Stone Map: Forbidden Zones Around Hiroshima Bay

Army and Navy boundary markers from the Meiji period, found as stones on summits: one on the 312 m top of Mount Suzugamine, others on a battery site whose gun-position marker survived, one in a cross-shaped anti-aircraft position at 700 m. Each entry gives the number, the year (many are Meiji 32, 1899) and the ministry named on the stone, and says whether it was moved to a park as an exhibit.

Objects

6565 points

Countries

Japan

Made with

Google My Maps
Buried Treasure Map: Shikoku's 88 Legends of Gold and Gods

The 88-temple pilgrimage rewritten as a treasure hunt. Stop 1 is Himiko’s tomb at the Yakurahime shrine; stop 2 is a bronze mirror said to be the Yata mirror of the imperial regalia, forged there; stop 3 is a rock cave of the sun goddess, with the caption “Takamagahara was in Awa”. Each stop lists the place, the treasure and the story, and the map carries 95 points.

Objects

9584 points, 11 areas

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Railway Track Oddities Map: Slips, Diamonds and Triple Crossings

A track-geek’s atlas: the scrapped right-angle crossing at Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi, three scissors crossings in a row at Kashiwa on the Tobu Noda Line, glass-fibre insulated rail joints at Tatebayashi, a turnout built onto the bridge over the Rokugo river on the Keikyu Line. Each of the 564 points links to a blog post explaining the trackwork.

Objects

564536 points, 28 lines

Countries

JapanGermany

Made with

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Volcano Eruption Map: The 1783 Asama Eruption in Diaries

Twenty-one towns, each with its own diary entry. Kaga, 170 km away, logged rumbling from 11:00 to 11:45 on the clocks the domain kept accurately, and only on the ninth did people work out which mountain it was. Kyoto’s shutters rattled at 300 km. Edo, 140 km, had ash falling like rain on the seventh, and Sado reported ash that night. Sources are named in every note.

Objects

2118 points, 3 lines

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Hand-Dug Tunnel Map: Boso Peninsula's Bare-Rock Passages

A cluster of tunnels cut by hand through southern Chiba, named one by one: the two Kakinokidai tunnels, Eishōji, Tsukizaki, Mukōyama and more. Each of the 141 points links to a photo report of the tunnel, many made of rock left rough, with no lining at all.

Objects

141137 points, 4 lines

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Giant Buddha Map: Japan's Weirdest Statues, Judged

A deadpan guide that grades the setting as much as the statue: Ushiku Daibutsu, 120 m, recognised by Guinness, with a lift inside and a zoo at its feet; Hokkaido Daikannon, 88 m, with a “religious theme park below that is a bit meh”; a 3 m Buddha sitting on the roof of a ruined drive-in, off limits and in danger of collapse; and an 18 m FRP red oni at Noboribetsu that glares at tourists.

Objects

204203 points, 1 area

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Adult Magazine Vending Machine Map: A Vanishing Roadside Institution

A field survey of the roadside sheds that sold adult magazines, tracking each as operating, removed or unconfirmed. Entries give the date a machine was last seen: one Tsuchiura site was found removed in February 2018, a Tsukuba shop in August 2022, and a shed near Mito stood empty in March 2024 before the clearing began in 2025. The mapmaker added a listing date to each, so the map is also a record of its own updates.

Objects

586586 points

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Air-Raid Tunnel Map: The Hidden Shelters Under Azabu, Tokyo

Tunnel lines named after the temples where they started, rebuilt from the memories of residents. One entrance led down a few steps into a concrete-lined tunnel with a drainage channel in the floor and a track for spoil carts; another was reportedly blocked in the 1950s. At Kenshōji the diggers are said to have broken through a well. All 31 points cite who saw what.

Objects

3122 points, 9 lines

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Dam Pilgrimage Map: Shikoku's 88 Dam Stations

A Shikoku pilgrimage for people who love concrete. Dams are numbered like temples, with the river system, type and operator for each: Miyagouchi Dam (1963) is no. 1, the 1935 Gosho Pond no. 2, and extra stops include the 1889 stone arch check dam by the Dutch engineer De Rijke and the Yoshino River’s Dai-jū weir, whose completion year is unknown.

Objects

109109 points

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Unusual Place Names Map: Rare Kanji Checked in the Field

722 places whose names use characters even Japanese readers cannot read, checked on the ground. In Kushiro the sign for Atchobetsu is introduced as a famously hard place name, but the first character is wrong: the original is a different one. Each region’s layer records whether the name was found on a sign, a pole or a bus stop, and what the sign says today.

Objects

722722 points

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Execution Ground Map: Edo Justice in Saitama

Where the Edo domains executed people, traced through the places that remember it. The Shimohara execution ground in Ōmiya was too unlucky to farm, became a ranch, then a factory site, now a shopping complex. The map also pins the bridge of tears where prisoners parted from their families and a fireball shrine. Notes carry tags for how reliable each location is, down to “according to locals”.

Objects

9585 points, 10 lines

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Disaster Memorial Stones Map: Japan's Floods, Typhoons and Slides

One person’s travelogue of disaster stones, sorted by typhoon, landslide, earthquake, tsunami, flood and volcano. A 1729 flood stone stands in a corner of a graveyard in Beppu; the Aion Typhoon’s Jizo shrine sits in a Hakone hotel courtyard; a 1726 landslide stone near Katsuyama marks a hundred years since 99 people died. Each entry says how to find the stone and what the inscription tells.

Objects

152152 points

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Yokai Map: Tsugaru's Ghosts in Japanese and English

Spirits placed at the spots where they appear, in both languages: a snow child at the Hirosaki snow lantern festival, a tree spirit in the cherry grove of Hirosaki Park, a book carriage spirit at Hirosaki Station, and a four-year-old boy at Apple Park strong enough to push nails into a temple pillar with his bare hands. Each of the 100 entries ends with a short story.

Objects

100100 points

Countries

Japan

Made with

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Glico-Morinaga Case Map: The Poisoned Sweets of October 1984

Fifteen shops, listed in order of discovery. The first poisoned sweets, canned drops with 0.18 g of cyanide, were found at a Family Mart in Koshienguchi at 11:45 on 7 October, followed by caramels, candy and chocolates in Osaka and Hyogo shops the same afternoon. The last turned up on 22 October. The map shows how an unsolved Kansai extortion case spread across a metropolitan area in sixteen days.

Objects

1515 points

Countries

Japan

Made with

Google My Maps

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