Neo-geography practices became popular in Japan after the 2011 earthquake when non-experts used geospatial data and maps to share disaster information. While open data and mapping projects increased public participation in neo-geography, traditional geography education in universities remained focused on training professionals and did not incorporate new open source tools and web-based mapping. However, some universities are now offering courses teaching students to use tools like OpenStreetMap for crisis mapping and addressing local issues.

1. Neo-geography
GeographyEducation
In recent years, neo-geographical practices became popular in Japanese society.
Neo-geography means that non-experts view, search, use and make the geospatial
information stored on various website according to their individual interest and daily living
situation (Turner 2006). Japanese ordinary people come to recognize the importance of
geospatial data and geographical visualization especially when they faced at the heavy
disaster situations in Great East Japan Earthquake, 2011. For example, sinsai.info
(http://www.sinsai.info) played important role for neo-geographical practices for sharing
disaster information. Ushahidi(http://www.ushahidi.com) based geographical visualization
of disaster information, base map delivered by crisis mapping of OpenStreetMap and
moderating information are managed by OSMFJ(OpenStreetMap Foundation Japan)
and global volunteer neo-geopraphers (Seto and Nishimura, 2015).
As related example,
OpenStreetMap project
are accepted as one of
the neo-geographical
mapping practice in
Japan. Japanese
registered users of
OpenStreetMap were
increased drastically at
April, 2011 and were over
3,700 in September,
2013(figure 1). The number
of registered and active
users still increasing
continuously.
Open data/government policies also interested Japanese ordinary people in the
neo-geographical practices. The effect of G8 open data charter agreed in 2014, The
action for open data by Japanese government is slow pace and the especially releasing
public open data by local governments in Japan is very limited (datainnovation.org, 2015).
However, voluntary activities related to open data are active in Japan. Code for Japan (it
learn from Code for America) established in 2013 and 32 authorized brigades (Fig. 2,
brigades mean volunteer groups of each local communities) and 23 brigades preparing
authorization in August 2015. The
number of the events of international
open data day has also increasing
every year. International open data
day events held only at 8 cities in 2013,
35 events in 2014, the events
expanded to 62 cities in 2015. These
events include the various type of the
meeting(hackathon, datathon stc.),
making/using geospatial data have
become one of the main topic
(photo 1).
The number of opened GIS data
and geocoded data is very limited in
Japan, these neo-geographers use
(and sometime they make by
themselves) geospatial data for
visualizing local issues geographically.
Because the main purpose of each
Code for X are solving the local issues
by using ICT, they need the
geographic visualizing and
geographical analysis for it. QGIS
hackfest planed by Japanese
neo-geographers and took placed in
July, 2014 at Tokyo. 2nd QGIS hackfest
in August, 2015 are expanded to
3cities (Tokyo, Sapporo, Osaka), these
events also carried out by
neo-geographers.
Such neo-geographical practices
could be related to Japanese
Neo-liberalism. Recent Japanese
‘New Public Commons’ could be
associated with these practices.
Though openness, transparency and participatory natures of these practices attract
attention by some of the Japanese local/national government and local citizen want to
use open data for solving local issues, bureaucratic tendency of the Japanese
local/national government and the limited contract article between local/national
government and the data producing company prevent local citizen from open data
access.
1. THE EMERGENCE OF NEO-GEOGRAPHY IN JAPAN 2. GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION IN JAPANESE UNIVERSITY
3. NEO-GEOGRAPHY,OPEN DATA,
AND GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION
Neo-geography and Geography Education
in the Japanese Universities
Yuichiro Nishimura1
Japanese geography education in universities are
similar to UK, most of the geography education in
universities are still old-fashioned and aimed for
educating professionals, the new type of mapping
practices like neo-geography are dissociated from it
(Dodge and Perkins, 2008). Geography education in
most of Japanese universities remains conservative
style. The GIS education in the Japanese geography
education is biased toward the methods of using
desktop, proprietary software like ArcGIS desktop.
The share of FOSS4G software and web-GIS are still
limited, and they did not integrated to geography
educating system, except some advanced
universities.
Japanese GIScience BoK(Body of Knowledge) has
established in 2012 (Fig. 3), small mention about
neo-geographical aspect. The part related to
neo-geography are as below.
Though there are the part of public participatory GIS(PPGIS) and internet GIS in the
chapter of GIS and society, there is no mention related to these words in the chapter of
GISc education.
Figure 1.OSM statistics of Japan from 2008 to April, 2013:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/images/a/ae/Osm-japan-data-node
s.png
Photo 1. International opendata day mapping event in
Nara, 2015
PO-18 1
Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nara Women's University
Kitauoyanishi-machi, Nara 630-8506, Japan
Email: nissy_yu@cc.nara-wu.ac.jp
However, such situation is now changing. The student have
new chance to using various different open source
softwares, web based platforms, and data collection
initiatives (Fig. 5)(Cowan and Hinton 2014). The several
universities in Japan now hire the new curriculum for
learning GIS and geography by neo-geographical tools.
The students also learn the possibility and the limitation of
neo-geographical mapping(Photo 3, Fig. 4). Some
university students now doing crisis mapping by
OpenStreetMap and making the disaster map by using
FOSS4G softwares (Photo 4).
Fig.3 Japanese GIScience BoK(Body of
Knowledge)
http://curricula.csis.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Fig. 2 Code for Japan 32 authorized brigade (August,
2015)
data derived from http://code4japan.org/brigade
chapter: GIS and society
PPGIS：Public Participation GIS
internet GIS
FOSS4G software
wikipedia town
geospatial open data
open data platform and related internet services used by neo-geographers in Japan
local story, qualitative
information
quoted local facts,
qualitative information
local fact data,
quantitative information
diverse map expression, custumable map
“open streetview”
custumable map, “open my map”
“my guide map”
issues
▽ understanding about neo-geography and open
data in the university
▽ materials, online tutorial for educating using
FOSS4G written in Japanese
▽ need for education of license of web map and
geospatil data
▽ keeping motivation finishing the university class
▽ making connections between
neo-geographers and university education
▽ open science and geography education in the
university
Photo 3 mapping around campus
Fig. 4 mapping around campus
campus
Photo 4 Nepal earthquake crisis
mapping in Nara Women’ s Univ.
Fig. 5 NEO-GEOGRAPHY,OPEN DATA, OPEN SOURCE AND GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION
©OpenStreetMap contributors