Submitted by Jug, who says:

I’d like to submit a map I have been working on for quite some time and finally completed. It’s a diagram of the Shinkansen high speed train network in Japan. As the network is basically one main trunk line going from Kyushu to Hokkaido and several spurs it makes sense to show it in a schematic way. Also high speed makes geography and distance almost irrelevant.

One will easily notice that the 4 main Japanese islands together form roughly a quarter of a circle while the national flag of Japan features a full red disc. Combine both and you get the foundations for a schematic representation of Japan. Add city names, in Japanese and English, and all train services (express, limited express, local) with their own dedicated names et voilà! You get a complete map of all Shinkansen services, no stop no dot, with a very, very iconic feel.

There is also another small diagram below showing the names of the track portions: Hokkaido, Tohoku, Tokaido… I hope you’ll like it!

Transit Maps says:

Another interesting project from the prolific Jug! I really love the stylised, graphical feel to this diagram: the stark red, black and white design is very striking, and the quarter rising sun leaves the reader in very little doubt as to what network is being represented!

The sweeping arc of the main trunk line is masterful: all the stations are spaced precisely one degree around the circle from each other, with their common centre point being the very top left corner of the map. Because of this, the station names seem to radiate evenly out from the edge of the circle: a nice effect. Perhaps strangely, this radial nature doesn’t extend to the lines that head inland, which all use a common 37-degree angle (the angle that Omiya, the first station with a branch line extending from it, is at). The first group of lines doesn’t look so bad, as they all head generally towards the top left corner, but the last branch line to Akita is at a very different angle to the radial type around the circle’s edge, and looks oddly skewed as a result. To be fair, it’s probably like this for a very practical reason as it allows station labels to fit into the spaces between the lines more easily, but I’d love to see a truly radial version of this diagram. I’ve quickly superimposed some blue lines on Jug’s map below to give an idea of what that could look like.

A few more notes: the text on Jug’s project page explains that the popular Japan Rail Pass is not accepted on the fastest Nozomi and Mizuho trains, but this useful information isn’t present on the map itself. Similarly, the station names shown to the north of Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto to Sapporo are part of a future expansion of the network, but no explanation to that effect appears on the map. I’m all for minimalism, but some things do need just a little more explanation.

Finally, a technical note: the white text reversed out of the red background is very fine and would be prone to filling in when printed. It’s often a good idea to bump the font weight up a level when reversing type, or to use a typeface that has positive and negative versions, each tailored for specific applications.

The final word: A strong graphical concept, very well executed. My personal preference would be for the whole diagram to continue on with the radial theme, but I feel sure that Jug explored that option during development before coming up with the solution he felt worked best.

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Source: Jug’s project page, and via email