Drawing from the Crowd

A Citizen Science Platform for Mapping Ukiyo-e Cultural Geography

Drawing from the Crowd began as a six-month research initiative (August 2024–January 2025) funded by The Nippon Foundation's Social Innovators Collaboration (NSIC), developed in collaboration with the University of Zurich's Chair of East Asian Art History. Building on this foundation, we secured implementation funding through a Career Grant from the Graduate Campus at the University of Zurich.

The platform launched publicly in October 2025. We invite you to join our growing community of citizen scientists helping to reveal how Edo-period prints positioned their viewers to experience Japan's famous landscapes.

By exploring the relationship between depicted and actual landscapes, we deepen our understanding of Japan's historical geography while highlighting the importance of cultural and environmental preservation. Your contributions help scholars across disciplines refine our understanding of spatial representation in early modern Japanese visual culture.

Project Overview: Discovering Japan's Historical Landscapes

Join us in uncovering how Japanese woodblock prints positioned their viewers to experience landscapes during the Tokugawa period (1603–1868). Our platform invites you to participate in research that combines citizen science with digital humanities to map and analyze the spatial relationships encoded in ukiyo-e prints.

The Project

"Drawing from the Crowd: A Citizen Science Platform for Mapping Ukiyo-e Cultural Geography" began as one of five projects selected for the 2024 Nippon Social Innovator's Collaboration (NSIC), funded by The Nippon Foundation. Building on this foundation, we secured implementation funding through a Career Grant from the Graduate Campus at the University of Zurich.

The platform launched publicly in October 2025, and we began citizen science outreach in December 2025. We are now actively building our community of contributors while expanding our print collection through partnerships with institutions worldwide.

This project aligns with Sustainable Development Goals 4: Quality Education and 11: Sustainable Communities, demonstrating how citizen-generated data can bridge the gap between academic research and public engagement.

Goals

  • Build Community through Citizen Science: Foster appreciation for Japanese cultural heritage and awareness of historical landscapes at local and international levels.
  • Grow Knowledge Among Project Members: Enhance expertise in interdisciplinary, multilingual research at the intersection of art history and digital humanities.
  • Advance Print Scholarship: Establish a methodology to assess how ukiyo-e prints encoded spatial relationships and positioned viewers to experience landscapes.

Our Mission

To create an engaging, accessible platform where anyone interested in Japanese landscapes and culture can contribute to genuine scholarship. Through collaborative georeferencing, we aim to distinguish between prints grounded in topographic observation and those shaped primarily by visual conventions and artistic templates.

How You Can Contribute

  • Identifying where you would stand to see the view depicted in a print
  • Matching terrain contours in prints with modern-day topography
  • Documenting which prints engage with actual geography versus imaginary or composite landscapes

Research Framework

Our project addresses two key questions:

  1. How can we collectively identify which print features reflect actual topography and which are rooted in visual conventions?
  2. What can this reveal about how Edo-period prints positioned their viewers to experience Japan's famous places (meisho)?

Platform Features

  • Bilingual interface (Japanese/English)
  • Interactive georeferencing tools comparing prints with 3D terrain models
  • Educational resources about spatial representation in Japanese visual culture
  • Community features for sharing discoveries and discussing findings
  • Step-by-step guides for participants of all backgrounds

Data and Resources

We work with:

  • A growing collection of digitized prints from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) and the Art Research Center at Ritsumeikan University (Kyoto)
  • Modern terrain data from the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI)
  • The Smapshot georeferencing platform developed by HEIG-VD/EPFL

Meet Our Team & Partners

Principal Investigator

Dr. Stephanie Santschi

Responsible for project conception, management, publishing, and networking; currently postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of East Asian Art History, Department of Art History, University of Zurich (specializing in Japanese art history).

She received her PhD from the University of Zurich (2023), and holds an MA Museum Studies from the University of East Anglia (2016). Her research interests include art history and digital humanities, particularly the representation of Japanese geography in early modern reproductive visual culture. She also supports citizen science as a research methodology in the humanities.

[email protected]

"We see this research community as a way to connect academic research with the general public. Please contact us with any inquiries or suggestions about participation."

Team

Dr. Drew Richardson

Team Collaborator

Instructor for Cowell College and the Department of History at the University of California Santa Cruz, serving as Director for Curriculum Development in the Okinawa Memories Initiative. Research examines media and place-making practices in native Japanese ethnography, folklore and monsters.

Himanshu Panday

Co-founder of Dignity in Difference, specializing in digital prototyping, coding, and AI-assisted workflows

PhD from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Specializes in digital anthropology, particularly citizen science platform development.

"I'm interested in curating and exploring new algorithms for citizen science in this project."

Hirohito Tsuji

PhD Candidate, Networking, Background Research and Japanese Translations

PhD Candidate at the University of East Anglia specializing in the Imperial Family of Japan. Interests include Japanese history, culture, arts, geography and Japanese studies from the perspective of digital humanities.

[email protected]

Funding and Support

Prototype Development: Generously provided by The Nippon Foundation Scholars Association (TNFSA), an alumni network of Nippon Foundation Scholarship recipients.

Implementation Funding: Generously provided as a Career Grant for PI Santschi by the Graduate Campus at the University of Zurich.

We are deeply grateful for the support of both institutions.

Getting Started: How to Participate

How It Works: 3 Simple Steps

Step 1: SELECT — Choose a print from our collection

Step 2: LOCATE — Identify where you would stand to see this view

Step 3: ALIGN — Match the print with modern terrain

Your Contribution Matters!

  • ✓ No Japanese language required
  • ✓ No art history expertise needed
  • ✓ 15–30 minutes per print
  • ✓ Every attempt helps—even "failed" ones provide valuable data!

What You'll Need

  • Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge browser (Edge has been working well recently)
  • Tip: If you encounter errors, try clearing your browser cache
  • 15–30 minutes of your time
  • Curiosity about Japanese culture and landscapes
  • Optional: Create an account to track your contributions

Quality Assurance & Data Usage

How We Ensure Quality:

Every submission is reviewed by the project's Principal Investigator before being incorporated into the dataset. This verification process helps maintain research integrity while providing learning opportunities for contributors.

  • Verification may take some time—if your contribution doesn't appear immediately on the map, please be patient
  • If a submission needs correction, we'll share feedback via comments to support your learning
  • Even "unsuccessful" attempts provide valuable data about which prints are difficult to locate

By Contributing:

By submitting to the platform, you agree that your contributions and username may be used by the project for non-commercial and educational purposes, including research publications and educational materials.

Ready to Start?

Partners and Resources

Drawing from the Crowd is made possible through collaboration with leading institutions in digital humanities, cultural heritage, and geospatial research.

Technical Partners

Smapshot Lab (HEIG-VD, EPFL)

Our citizen science platform is built on Smapshot, a crowdsourcing tool developed by HEIG-VD that enables volunteers to locate historical images in a 3D virtual globe. We adapted their monoplotting technology to accommodate the unique spatial conventions of Japanese prints.

Website: https://smapshot.heig-vd.ch

Data Partners

Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University (Kyoto)

The project is registered at the International Joint Digital Archiving Center for Japanese Art and Culture (ARC-iJAC). We utilize their comprehensive Japanese Prints (Ukiyo-e) and Paintings Portal Database.

Database: https://www.dh-jac.net/db/nishikie/search_portal.php

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)

We developed and tested our workflows using images and metadata published under a Creative Commons CC0 license from The Met's Open Access initiative. Selected images have also been included in the dataset available on our platform.

Open Access: https://github.com/metmuseum/openaccess

Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI)

Modern Japanese terrain data enabling comparison between historical prints and contemporary topography.

Website: https://fgd.gsi.go.jp/

Blog

From Prototype to Platform: Our Journey So Far

December 2025 | By the Drawing from the Crowd Team

We're excited to launch the blog for Drawing from the Crowd! This space will share project updates, research insights, and stories from our growing community of citizen scientists.

Where It All Began

In August 2024, Drawing from the Crowd was selected as one of five projects for The Nippon Foundation's Social Innovators Collaboration (NSIC). This six-month grant enabled our interdisciplinary team—spanning digital anthropology, spatial history, and Japanese (art) history—to develop a prototype platform for georeferencing ukiyo-e prints.

The challenge we set ourselves was ambitious: could we adapt existing crowdsourcing technology, designed for historical photographs, to work with stylized Japanese woodblock prints? Unlike photographs, ukiyo-e prints encode space through cultural conventions—artists might move Mt. Fuji for better composition, elongate beaches for dramatic effect, or combine multiple viewpoints into a single image.

Building the Prototype (August 2024–January 2025)

Working with our technical partners at Smapshot Lab (HEIG-VD), we adapted their monoplotting technology for Japanese prints. Beta testing revealed something exciting: while foreground elements in prints are often manipulated for artistic effect, middle and background terrain maintains consistent relationships with actual geography.

Implementation Phase (August 2025–July 2026)

Drawing from the Crowd has secured implementation funding through a Career Grant from the Graduate Campus at the University of Zurich. The platform launched publicly in October 2025, and we began citizen science outreach in December 2025.

Join Us

Whether you're a specialist in Japanese art, a geography enthusiast, or simply someone who enjoys visual puzzles, we'd love your help in mapping the landscapes of ukiyo-e. Visit our Getting Started page to learn how to participate, and follow this blog for updates on our progress.