How to Colour a Blank Map of Japan by Prefecture: for Lessons, Reports and Service Area Maps
Class handouts, school projects, the service areas in a company report, a travel list of prefectures you want to visit: there are surprisingly many occasions when you want a blank map of Japan coloured by prefecture. But colouring on paper rarely looks neat, and in Excel or PowerPoint even preparing the map shapes takes effort. This article compares ways to colour a blank map by prefecture, walks through making a colour-coded map with a free tool and exporting it as an image, and explains how to choose colours and a legend so the map gets its message across.
Comparing ways to colour a blank map
There are four main ways to make a map coloured by prefecture. The quickest way to choose is by the situation and what you'll do with the map afterwards.
| Method | Best for | Things to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Colouring a paper blank map by hand | Work during class, learning for young children | Small prefectures are hard to colour. Hard to correct, and needs scanning to put in documents |
| Shapes in Excel or PowerPoint | When you want it built into a company document | Preparing shapes for 47 prefectures takes effort. Excel's map charts sometimes fail to recognise prefecture names |
| Colouring a blank map in an image editor | When you care about the design | Finding a blank map and filling each prefecture takes time |
| A dedicated colour-map tool | When you want an image right away, or to remake it many times | Limited fine control over the design |
If your goal is to "colour prefectures in a few groups" or "get an image with a legend", a dedicated tool is the fastest way to finish. From here on, the steps use the "Color Map" in the Visited Prefectures Map.
Steps for making a colour map
- 1
Choose "Color Map"
Open the tool and switch the mode to "Color Map". Three colour groups, A, B and C, are provided to start with.
- 2
Set the group (legend) names and colours
Rename the groups to something like "Available" and "Coming soon", and choose a colour from 12. With "Choose another color" you can also use any colour from a colour picker. You can add up to 8 groups.
- 3
Pick a colour and tap prefectures
Select the group you want to colour and tap prefectures on the map. Tapping again with the same colour undoes it. For small prefectures, colouring from "Pick from the list" below the map is the sure way.
- 4
Add a title and a note
Enter the image title (such as "Service area") and a note (such as "As of October 2026"). Both appear at the top left of the image.
- 5
Save as PNG or SVG
Press "Save image (PNG)" or "Save as SVG". The legend and the number of prefectures in each group are included in the image.
For common combinations, starting from one of the ready-made templates ("3 colors (A, B, C)", "Favorites & wish list", "Store / service areas", "Yes / No") saves typing the names.
Examples of colour groups by purpose
| Purpose | Example groups | Tips |
|---|---|---|
| Lessons and school projects (regions) | 8 groups: Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kanto, Chubu, Kinki, Chugoku, Shikoku, Kyushu-Okinawa | Fits exactly within the 8-group limit. Avoid similar colours for neighbouring regions |
| Store or service areas | Available, partly available, coming soon | Use a dark colour for available and a light one for coming soon to show expansion |
| Survey results | Yes, no | Choose colours with no built-in meaning for either side (such as blue and orange) |
| Favourites and wish-list map | Love it, like it, want to go, don't know it | Make "don't know it" grey so it doesn't stand out |
| Where family or friends are from | One group per person | With many people, narrow it to 8 or group them by region |
Colouring with the 8 regional groups produces the same map as the regional division diagrams in Japanese textbooks. For which prefecture belongs to which region, see the region table in How to make a visited-prefectures map (sources differ on whether Mie belongs to Kinki or Chubu).
Choosing colours that get the message across
- Keep the number of colours down: beyond 5 or 6 groups, readers have to keep comparing the legend and the map. Merge groups with similar meanings.
- If the meaning has an order, show it with shade: when there are stages, such as "available → partly available → coming soon", arranging shades of one colour from dark to light conveys the order by colour alone.
- For groups without an order, use clearly different colours: for groups with no ranking, such as regions or people's names, use colours with different hues, such as red, blue, yellow and green.
- Don't rely on red and green alone: quite a few people find red and green hard to tell apart. If you use red and green, make their brightness very different, or use a blue and orange combination so everyone can distinguish them.
- Distinguish from uncoloured prefectures: uncoloured prefectures are light grey. Avoid light grey as a group colour, or they can't be told apart.
Tips for colouring small prefectures and islands neatly
A common stumbling block when colouring a map of Japan is small prefectures such as Tokyo, Kanagawa, Osaka and Kagawa. On a phone screen they're smaller than a fingertip, so it's easy to colour the neighbouring prefecture by mistake.
- Use "Pick from the list" below the map: prefectures are listed by region, and tapping a name colours it in the currently selected group. When colouring all 47 prefectures, the list can be faster than the map.
- Check in the list after colouring: the list uses the same colours as the map, which makes missed or wrong prefectures easy to spot.
- On a computer, hover over a prefecture: its name appears before you click, so you can confirm which one you're colouring.
- Okinawa is in the box at the bottom right: Okinawa isn't in its true position but in a box at the bottom right of the map, enlarged 1.6 times. It's the same layout as textbook maps.
If small prefectures' colours are hard to see in the image, choosing a dark colour for their group makes them stand out. Pale yellow or light blue makes small prefectures hard to tell apart from uncoloured ones.
Checklist before saving
- Can you tell what the map is from the title alone? ("Service areas for ○○" rather than "Service areas")
- Do the legend's group names say exactly what the colours mean? (Haven't they been left as "A" and "B"?)
- Does the note explain whether uncoloured prefectures (light grey) are "not covered" or "undecided"?
- Are there no similar colours side by side, and can groups be told apart even in black-and-white printing?
- Is the date included ("as of month, year")?
Check these five points before saving and you'll have a map that's read as you intended, whether it's pasted into a document or shared on social media.
Tips for using the finished map in documents
- PNG for slides and social media: you can paste it straight in. The image is portrait, with the title and legend at the top left.
- SVG for printing and enlarging: lines stay sharp when enlarged, and you can adjust colours and text later in software such as Illustrator.
- Whether to show prefecture names: turn on "Show prefecture names on the map (also in the image)" and the names appear in the image too. It's recommended for geography learning or for documents aimed at people unfamiliar with the map.
- Include a date: store and service areas change, so writing the date in the note stops an old map from staying in use.
- Map source: the boundaries are a simplified version of jpn-atlas (BSD-3-Clause), based on the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan's Global Map Japan. Small islands, the Ogasawara Islands and the Daito Islands are omitted, and Okinawa is enlarged in a box at the bottom right. Mention this in documents that need accurate shapes.
You can turn your colour map into a link with "Copy this map's URL", and anyone who opens it sees the same map. If you want prefectures coloured automatically by the size of a value per prefecture (population, sales and so on), you can make a choropleth map with "Color by Value (Choropleth)". The steps are explained in How to make a choropleth map.
FAQ
- Can I colour a blank map of Japan for free?
- Yes. With the "Color Map" in the Visited Prefectures Map, there's no sign-up: set group names and colours, tap prefectures to colour them, and save as a PNG or SVG image with a legend.
- How many colours can I use?
- Up to 8 groups, with colours chosen from 12 or set freely with a colour picker. The 8 regions of Japan fit exactly into 8 groups too.
- Can I paste the colour map into Word or PowerPoint?
- You can paste the image saved with "Save image (PNG)" as it is. If you'll print it large or want to adjust colours later, "Save as SVG" is recommended.
- What if I colour the wrong prefecture?
- With the same colour still selected, tap that prefecture again to return it to uncoloured. Select another group's colour and tap it to recolour it in that colour.
Tools in this article
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