Visualization for Changes in Relationships between Historical Figures in Chronicles

Abstract

A huge number of historical documents that have been accumulated for a long time are currently being digitized. However, it is difficult for us to analyze and obtain insight into the past from such documents. This paper proposes an interactive visualization system to extract networks of historical figures from historical data and to show time-varying changes in their relationships. It enables users to explore changes in the structure of the network interactively. Moreover, it extracts characteristics of each relationship, such as hostile or friendly relations, and visualizes them on the network. It enables us to understand changes in past society better by exploring changes in relationships between people.