Presentations

During the Meiji era, marked by Japan’s rapid modernization, the Japanese government’s policy was to send many Japanese students to study in the West. Upon their return to Japan, these students became the driving force behind Japan’s modernization. This human mobility created an important human network, responsible for significant changes in Japanese society. The study aims to visualize the mobility and resulting networks of Japanese students abroad, by collecting and digitizing data from student registers of universities in the German-speaking regions. The data is synchronized with positional information on a digital map. This makes it possible to understand and visualize the complex human networks between Japanese students in the German-speaking countries during the Meiji era, that played a vital part in shaping Japanese society after their return to Japan. Keywords: Japan’s modernization, Japanese students at German-speaking universities, human mobility

During the Meiji era, which represented Japan's modernization, the Japanese government's policies led to the dispatch of many Japanese students to study in the West. After returning to Japan, these students became the driving force behind Japan's modernization. This human mobility created an important human network. The study aims to visualize the mobility of Japanese students studying abroad by collecting and digitizing data from student registers used at German-speaking universities and synchronizing the positional information contained in that data on a map.