Exploring where people studied and where they live now

The human resources survey data published by Japan’s Cabinet Office include responses identifying prefectures. Where was your high school? Where was the institution at which you attained your highest level of education? Where do you live and work now? We became interested in how these questions could help us explore the connections between moving for education or employment and the places people later call home.

Rokugeisha’s regional mobility network connects three of these places: high school, university or graduate school, and residence at the time of the survey. Where did the people who came before you study, and where do they live now? We particularly hope that high school students considering university will use the diagram to think about their own possible paths.

The diagram includes respondents whose highest level of education is university or graduate school and whose three locations are all identified within Japan’s prefectures. The university or graduate school node represents the institution of highest education. For people who completed graduate studies, this is not necessarily the location of their undergraduate university. Workplace locations are not included in this diagram, so it connects places of study with current residence, rather than with the locations of jobs.

The same data can be explored in two layouts. The connection layout arranges nodes according to their relationships. The three-layer layout places high school, university or graduate school, and current residence in separate layers from top to bottom, with each prefecture aligned vertically. You can rotate this view and choose the minimum number of respondents for a line to appear. The instructions below describe the connection layout.

View connection layout ／ View three-layer layout

Start with the prefecture where your high school is located

The first time you open the diagram, it shows connections across all prefectures for the 2025 responses, with all gender and age groups included. Blue circles represent high schools, yellow squares represent universities or graduate schools, and red triangles represent current residence. Each prefecture has three roles, so it appears as a separate node for each one. Blue lines connect high school to university or graduate school; yellow lines connect university or graduate school to current residence.

If you are a high school student, start by choosing the prefecture where your school is located. You can use “High school prefecture” just above the diagram, or click or tap a blue node directly.

Selecting a prefecture narrows the view to respondents who went to high school there and places its blue node at the center. Which prefectures did people from your area go on to study in? In the display settings on the left, choose “High school → univ./grad.” under “Routes to display” to focus first on where they studied.

Hover over a node to see its prefecture, count and connections with the largest counts. You can also tap yellow and red nodes to see this information. If part of the diagram looks crowded, use the mouse wheel or pinch to zoom in, then drag to move around.

Choose a possible place to study, then look at where people live now

Next, choose a prefecture where you might consider going to university. Setting “University / graduate school prefecture” narrows the view to respondents who actually followed that combination of locations. “Respondents in view” shows how many there are.

Choose “Both routes” or “Univ./grad. → residence” to explore where those people now live. Are there people living back in their home prefecture? Do many live in the prefecture where they studied? Or do the connections lead somewhere else?

For example, with 2025 selected and all gender and age groups included, choosing Hokkaido for high school and Aomori for university or graduate school gives 48 respondents. At the time of the survey, 29 lived in Hokkaido, one lived in Aomori, and 18 lived in other prefectures. This breakdown also appears below the diagram when the two selected prefectures are different.

Hover over or tap the red triangles for current residence or the yellow university node to explore the destinations. Where do the largest numbers live now? Are there lines leading to unexpected prefectures? Seeing the counts can make it a little easier to imagine the people living in those places.

What we know here is where people lived at the time of the survey. We cannot tell whether they returned home immediately after graduation or after working somewhere else. Someone living in the same prefecture as their university may also have lived in another prefecture in between. There are periods of people’s lives between these three places that the diagram does not show.

You can also keep the high school prefecture fixed and change only the university prefecture. For people starting from the same area, how do the places they now live differ according to where they studied? When considering a university, this can help you look beyond the few years you would spend there and think about the life that might follow.

Do the connections differ by year or gender?

You can switch between 2016 and 2025 while keeping the same pair of prefectures selected. We put these two years side by side because we wanted to explore how the connections between places of study and current residence differ across a gap of almost a decade. How do the lines leading home, to nearby prefectures or to major cities appear?

You can also switch between men and women. Among people who went to high school in the same prefecture and studied at university in the same prefecture, do the connections to current residence differ? Set the university prefecture back to “All prefectures” to compare places of study as well.

The layout is based on the 2025 responses across all gender and age groups. Changing the high school prefecture changes the layout, but changing the year, gender, age, university prefecture or displayed routes leaves the nodes in place. Use the same nodes as reference points while comparing the lines.

Line widths are based on respondent counts, without adjusting for differences in respondent numbers or age composition across years and gender groups. The displayed counts are not estimates of the number of people moving across Japan, either. A thicker line does not by itself mean that a larger proportion of people chose that move. Check the number of respondents in view as you explore.

Do places of residence differ between those aged 39 and under and those aged 40 and over?

The age settings are “Ages 39 and under” and “Ages 40 and over”. There are many possible ways to divide age groups. We chose 40 as one reference point for thinking about the years between leaving university, starting work and the later stages of working life.

Suppose, for example, that someone finishes university before 25 and reaches a milestone in their working life around 60. Around 40 would be close to the halfway point. By then, some people may have chosen a place to settle or decided to return home. We wondered whether differences in residence might become visible as such choices accumulate.

Keep the same high school and university prefectures selected and switch the age group. If connections spread across several regions among younger respondents, what do they look like among those aged 40 and over? Or do similar connections appear in both groups?

This does not mean that everyone decides where to settle by 40. We are also comparing different age groups at each survey date, rather than following the same people from youth into later life. The diagram does not directly show where today’s respondents aged 39 and under will live in the future. We use this dividing point as a starting place for thinking about whether choices of where to live differ by age or generation.

Look from the perspective of a university or region

For a different perspective, set the high school prefecture to “All prefectures” and select only the university prefecture. People who studied at universities or graduate schools there came from high schools in which prefectures, and where do they live now? You can look at a university’s region both as a place that receives students and as a place connected to their later lives elsewhere.

Set both prefecture selections back to “All prefectures” to return to the full network. Do connections between education and later residence seem to form groups linking particular regions? Exploring these regional connections was another reason we wanted to make the diagram.

Nodes are placed using the connections in the responses, rather than their positions on a map. A group of nearby nodes may offer a clue to relationships between regions, but it does not establish a shared area of daily life or a distinct pattern of circulation. If a grouping catches your attention, select a prefecture and check which nodes are actually connected.

Think about your future through the lives of those who came before you

Behind each line are people who chose those places and now live there. Someone’s path may overlap with a route you will one day take.

Why did they go to that prefecture to study? What did they want to learn? If the range of subjects available close to home is limited, discovering where people went may make you even more curious about what they studied there.

This diagram does not display their fields of study or their reasons for choosing a place. Even so, seeing a concrete connection can give you something to ask someone who has gone before you. What did they learn there? Why did they return home? What led them to live where they do now? We hope the diagram will prompt you to talk with people you know or consider what matters to you.

Connecting responses about prefectures can reveal questions like these about the relationship between where people study and where they live. Use the diagram as material for thinking about your own future while exploring the lives of those who came before you.

Source: Japan’s Cabinet Office, e-CSTI human resources analysis and open data (Japanese). Organized and processed by Rokugeisha.