Historical maps of Tokyo, Japan, Osaka, Japan, and Kyoto, Japan, can be viewed in Google Maps and Google Earth. All maps are from the East Asian Library, UC-Berkeley. The maps have been scanned and georectified by David Rumsey and Cartography Associates for the East Asian Library. The map images are Copyright© 2002 by the UC Regents.

Viewing historical maps in GIS viewers allows integration and interaction of historical maps with current geospatial data and other historical maps. Examination of the maps in GIS reveals changes in the history of the areas shown on the maps. The current geospatial data that can be overlaid and compared to the historical maps includes roads, lakes, parks, provincial boundaries, and satellite imagery. Users can interactively blend/fade/merge and overlay/swipe multiple map layers for enabling real-time visual change analysis over the Internet.