Introduction

Abstract

This introduction explains the background of the health atlas project of Japan. After the bubble economy boom burst in the early 1990s, a long-lasting economic stagnation known as the lost decade(s) has deeply impacted Japan. Since the late 1990s, the widening income gap and rising poverty rates have become a shared social concern in society. These trends are thought to be associated with growing social inequality in health, even though the national insurance system covers most of the population. This health atlas project intends to provide a clear picture of Japanese health disparities from a geographic perspective by using a series of cartographic representations and quantitative measures of the health inequalities. Regarding the mapping technique conducted in the project, the concept of the cartogram with the example of life expectancy at birth (LEB) as of 2010 will be introduced; the cartogram may change our view on geographical health inequalities in Japan. Traditional thematic mapping of the indicator highlights the gap in LEB between two non-metropolitan parts, the northern and central parts of the main island, Honshu. Looking through the cartogram lens, another comparable gap in LEB emerges within metropolitan regions, affluent and healthy suburbs vs. unhealthy and more deprived inner-city areas, indicating socioeconomic inequality of longevity. This atlas project highlights geographically observable socioeconomic inequalities in health among about 1800 municipalities and their transitions in the two decades from 1995 to 2014.