Population geography with GIS in Japan

Japanese geography studies are now being greatly affected by the rapid development of geographical information systems (GIS). Unfortunately, there has been little response from Japanese population geographers to this movement. Is GIS a welcome or an unwelcome guest? After discussing the significance of employing GIS, this article introduces some recent papers that used GIS in the field of population geography on such issues as mortality mapping, migration analysis, and household studies. Then, the two promising population-related topics of married one-person households and fertility are discussed. The ability of GIS to greatly facilitate analysis, which previously needed much time and energy, can be an encouraging stimulus of innovation in studies of current population geography. Therefore, GIS is clearly a welcome guest, although it is too wishful to think that its use would lead directly to a revitalization of contemporary population geography studies.