Reviews: Atlas of Japan, Physical, economic and social

E. A. Keen reviews Ryujiro Michida’s Atlas of Japan: Physical, Economic, and Social (1970), produced through a government–academic initiative to provide multilingual reference works on Japan. Keen praises its thematic coverage, cartographic quality, detailed spatial data, and English, French, and Spanish commentaries, noting unusual topics such as daily metropolitan population flows. Criticisms concern population data that overlook the available 1965 census, misleading English titles and legends, unfamiliar place-name romanization, and the lack of a place-name index and detailed locator maps. He recommends the atlas for libraries and considers it suitable for introductory courses on Japan’s geography, although its price limits textbook use.