A Glimpse Into Tokyo's Past

Retroscope is a fascinating insight into Tokyo's history glimpsed through historical aerial views of the city. This interactive map presents a collection of aerial views of the metropolis dating dorsum to 1945.

The map uses a magnifying lens command to allow you lot to persuasion historical aerial imagery of Tokyo overlaid on a modern map of the city. You tin too guide to persuasion a vintage 1880 map of Tokyo overlaid on the modern map.

One of the interesting details that the map reveals is the historical canal network inwards Ginza. The canals tin live on clearly seen inwards the 1880 map too the 1945 aerial imagery. However yesteryear the fourth dimension of the 1961 aerial imagery close all the canals convey disappeared from the city.

The magnifying drinking glass effect used inwards Retroscope is published on GitHub (with no license details). Alternatively you lot tin role the Leaflet.MagnifyingGlass plugin (available nether a MIT license) to exercise a like trial on a Leaflet.js map.