Tenured Professor at
The Open University of Japan

Who am I?

My name is Kazushi Tamano. I'm a professor at The Open University of Japan. Here, I'd like to introduce some of the findings from the latest research projects conducted in my lab.

About Project I, II and III

At my lab, since 2013, a project we have been tacking with is to define geographical dermacation of urban areas in Japan. The first 3 years of this project (Vol. 1) was spent appling a tentative assumption onto some major cities, from which attempt we have established our methodology of defining urban areas.
In the following 3 years (Vol. 2), application has been expanded covering all areas in Japan. Currently, we are analysing the results which show us the trend shifts of those areas from 1970 to 2010.
In Projects I and II, we developed meshed data-based urban areas 2010 (mdbUA2010) that define Japan’s 118 urban areas and its analysis of population changes. Project III was launched by adding the data retrieved from the national census in 2015 and 2020 to cover subsequent trends. Our latest analysis reveals that many Japanese cities have entered the phase of population decline.
Please enjoy reading the findings here.

Results of the KAKENHI-Funded Research Project, Vol. 1

This volume presents the results of the research project supported by KAKENHI, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, from 2013 to 2015. Herein, you can learn basic information about the purpose and methods of urban area demarcation work undertaken using meshed data as well as review an outline of the results.

What is the Issue?
Meshed Date
How We Defined Urban Areas
Defined Urban Areas by mbdUA2010
Findings Using mdbUA

The official name of the research project is listed below:
2013-2015 Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Principal Investigator: TAMANO Kazushi
“Operational Method to Identify Urban Areas for Basic Statistical Analysis”

Results of the KAKENHI-Funded Research Project, Vol. 2

This volume presents the interim report on the research project supported by KAKENHI from 2016 to 2018. Following the completion of the research that is documented in Vol. 1, I conducted the work of demarcating urban areas across the country using meshed data to facilitate a greater understanding of trends and issues facing urban areas throughout Japan.

Defining the Boundary-lines of Urbanized Areas across Japan
mdbUA (meshed data based Urban Areas) 2010 Japan
Analysis of population trend
Findings on population trend analysis
Long-term trend analysis
Distribution Map of Population Trends

The official name of the research project is listed below:
2016-2018 Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Principal Investigator TAMANO Kazushi
“Trend Analysis in Urban Area based on mdbUA in Japan”
※This research is part of CSIS, Center for Spatial Information Science Collaborative Research No. 703 at the University of Tokyo. As with the previous project, Ryota Kanazawa, Satoshi Maeda, and Eri Yoshida provided significant contributions to the creation and analysis of data, and their assistance was also instrumental in creating this English webpage.

Results of the KAKENHI-Funded Research Project, Vol. 3

This volume presents the interim report on the research project supported by KAKENHI from 2022 to 2024. Following the completion of the research that is documented in Vol. 2, I added the data in 2015 and 2020 and investigated the subsequent trends in Japanese urban areas.

Change of Expanded Cities
Change of Sustainable/ Stable Cities
Change of Stagunant or Contracting Cities
Recent Changes of Japanese cities
New Distribution Map of population trends
Summary

The official name of the research project is listed below:
2022-2024 Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Principal Investigator TAMANO Kazushi
“Research on Transition of Meshed Data Based Urban Areas (mdbUA2010)”