Multiple Visualizations of the Personal Promotion Histories of Court Nobles in Japan

This paper proposes methods of visualizing the personal promotion records of Japanese government officials in medieval times. Our research is aimed at developing multiple visualization tools that facilitate discovery of exceptional promotions as a way of highlighting interesting or important factors behind historical events, or that enable comparison of various promotion patterns to aid in understanding the political background the period. We have developed the following tools for visualizing personal promotion records:(i) the personal promotion graph (PPG-I) enables visualization of the promotional transition of court nobles in medieval Japan, and (ii) the promotion pattern graph (PPG-II) shows various promotion patterns that help reveal typical patterns of promotion for court nobles in relation to a particular period or family. There are many techniques for visualizing data in different ways. These tools provide variations in viewpoints for analyzing the political background of the era and help trigger consideration of different scenarios.