{"id":519,"date":"2012-02-08T13:08:25","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T13:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/avery.morrow.name\/blog\/?p=519"},"modified":"2013-05-15T01:17:02","modified_gmt":"2013-05-15T01:17:02","slug":"off-the-map-villages-in-japan-a-google-maps-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/avery.morrow.name\/blog\/2012\/02\/off-the-map-villages-in-japan-a-google-maps-investigation\/","title":{"rendered":"Off-the-map villages in Japan: A Google Maps investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I remember reading once about a “town that doesn’t exist on a Japanese map”, where burakumin live. As far as I can tell this was the fancy of some anti-Japanese writer. Still, the idea intrigued me, so I went and scoured the Japanese Web for a list of private residences that don’t exist on maps. Most hisabetsu buraku, old untouchable hamlets, have vanished from town borders and are now replaced with ordinary, nice little suburbs<\/a>. But on this list, there are a few oddball places that I can’t explain from the information available on the Internet.<\/p>\n

Please cue the X-Files theme for whenever you see that a hamlet really has no official name.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For comparison…<\/b><\/p>\n