This talk introduces an experimental project that reconstructs the spatial world of Keiji Nakazawa’s manga Barefoot Gen using open geospatial technologies.

Although Barefoot Gen is widely known as a narrative of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, readers usually experience the story only through sequential manga panels. As a result, the geographic structure of the city—distance from the hypocenter, directions of movement, terrain, and the scale of destruction—often remains abstract.

To address this, the project models each narrative scene as structured geospatial data (scene ID, order, place type, viewpoint, coordinates, time phase, and source reference). These scene points are visualized in a web-based 3D viewer built with CesiumJS, combined with historical maps and open geospatial datasets. Users can navigate Hiroshima spatially, explore key scenes from the narrative, and examine how the story relates to the real geography of the city.

Methodologically, the project borrows a geolocation logic similar to OSINT-style analysis—linking open sources to geographic coordinates—but applies it to cultural memory rather than investigative verification. The goal is not to reproduce the past exactly, but to make the “distance to history” visible and explorable through geographic space.

The presentation will demonstrate a prototype viewer currently under development, focusing on an initial set of narrative scenes reconstructed as geospatial data. The talk will also discuss how open geospatial technologies can support new forms of spatial storytelling and contribute to emerging practices in Geospatial Humanities.