Moving Mountains:Analyzing Spatial Narratives in Ukiyo-e through Citizen Science

The project ‘Drawing from the Crowd’ (initiated by four Nippon Foundation scholarship alumni, August 2024–January 2025) integrates citizen science and machine learning to analyse spatial representation in early-modern Japanese visual culture. Addressing a fundamental question in Japanese art history, namely, how and to what extent illustrators constructed narrative space through direct observation or relied on secondary sources and artistic-literary conventions to create a shared spatial imaginary, this experimental six-month project focused on developing and testing computational methods to analyse patterns and processes of observation in ukiyo-e (Tokugawa-period Japanese woodblock prints) landscapes. This presentation introduces its digital workflow prototype which combines citizen science, artificial intelligence, and geographical information systems (GIS) in a mixed micro-macro history approach. Whereas distant reading enables clustering of large datasets to visualise trends and patterns across schools, object types or time periods, citizen scientists contribute close readings to the project’s GIS system through spatial observations and comments. They do so in selected ukiyo-e case studies, such as comparing Mt. Fuji’s changing visual placement in Enoshima shore views against a topological elevation model of that area. Building on these contextualised case studies, the discussion expands to implications of printed visual and textual data for refining topological understanding, particularly in cases where illustrators balanced artistic and poetic conventions with geographical realities. This analysis, relevant to ukiyo-e and kusazōshi studies, reveals how such materials depended on and furthered the shared spatial imaginary of their early-modern readers. The project’s GIS-enhanced digital humanities approach establishes communally generated geographic observations as key evidence for understanding the spatial narratives of early-modern Japanese print culture.