Spanning the Bridge of Time

摘要

LOOKING AT OLD MAPS is a hobby for me. Like any lover of history, I prefer to consult old maps before beginning a journey. For it is often on dusty and out-of-date maps that history waits to be rediscovered.In Tokyo, just north of the Imperial Palace, there is a place I sometimes visit to consult old maps. It is called the National Archives of Japan. Other places in Tokyo have good map collections too, such as the National Diet Library, found on the far side of the Palace. What leads me to the National Archives, however, is that it is the official repository of the Japanese government. Here I can find a variety of official maps of Japan, some dating back nearly four hundred year.