Restoration of administrative boundaries in Shiga Prefecture in the early Meiji Period using the subregional boundary data of the national censuses

Abstract

With reference to the “Shiga Prefecture Municipal Transition Map (1)”, old town/village boundaries in Shiga Prefecture between 1868 and 1879 were reconstructed by processing subregional polygon data from three nationwide censuses: National Census, Census of Agriculture and Forestry, and Census of Economy. In all cases based on sub-regional polygon data, more than 90% of the old town/village boundaries could be reconstructed using attribute information alone. For 10% of the old towns and villages, supplementary information was needed to reconstruct the boundaries. There was less need for supplementary information when reconstructing boundaries from the data of Census of Economy and the data of Census of Agriculture and Forestry. The old town/village boundaries created from the Census of Economy data were most similar to the shape of the town/ village boundaries in the “Shiga Prefecture Municipal Transition Map (1)”. These results suggest that the sub-regional data of the Census of Economy are the most suitable for reconstructing the old town/village boundaries of the early Meiji period in Shiga Prefecture.