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e-Stat CSV to Chart

Load a CSV you downloaded from e-Stat or another Japanese official statistics site, and get a chart ready to paste into an article or a proposal. The tool works out which rows are notes and headers and which columns hold years or regions, and draws the Japanese labels as they are. Files are processed only in this browser and never sent anywhere.

1 — Load a CSV

Drop a CSV file downloaded from e-Stat or a similar site here

Paste the CSV text instead

2 — Build the chart

Build the chart Chart type

Numeric columns
Items to show

3 — Chart

Load a CSV and the chart appears here.

4 — Title, source and save

Title, source and save

e-Stat’s terms of use, among others, ask you to credit the source when you use the data. When the file looks like an e-Stat CSV, a draft credit is filled in; check the survey name and the producing agency and edit it.

How to Use

  1. Download a CSV and load itOn an e-Stat table page, choose “Download”, pick a CSV format and save it, then drop the file here. Shift_JIS and UTF-8 both work, as do the cross-tabulation and column-oriented layouts.
  2. Shape the chartThe item column, numeric columns and filters are chosen for you. Change them if needed, then pick a chart type: column, bar, line or pie.
  3. Add a title and source, then saveCheck the title, unit and source line, and save as PNG or SVG, ready to paste into an article or a proposal.

About This Tool

Turns official statistics CSV files into charts without a spreadsheet. CSV files from e-Stat and similar sites usually carry the table name and notes above the data, sometimes have two-row headers, and often list the newest year first, which makes them awkward to chart directly. This tool finds the block of numbers, separates the header and note rows, and decides whether each column is a label, a number, a point in time or a code.

How numbers and symbols are read. Thousands separators (“1,234”), full-width digits and negatives marked with “△” or “▲” are read as numbers. Symbols that mean “no value”, such as “-”, “…”, “x” and “***”, are treated as blank (no bar is drawn and the line breaks there). Columns of years, fiscal years, Japanese era years (such as 令和2年), year-months and quarters count as time and are sorted oldest first. Rows such as totals (合計, 総数) start unchecked so the other items stay readable; turn them back on under “Items to show”.

Chart types and limits. On “Auto”, a time axis gets a line chart, more than 12 items or long names get a horizontal bar chart, and anything else gets a column chart. A pie chart uses the positive values of one series; with ten or more items, the eight largest are kept and the rest are grouped as “Other”. Up to 300 items and 12 series are drawn. There is no aggregation (sums or averages are not recalculated).

File formats. SVG is a vector format that keeps the text and stays sharp at any size. PNG is exported at twice the resolution. Text is drawn with the Japanese fonts installed on the device (Hiragino Sans, Yu Gothic, Meiryo, Noto Sans JP and so on), so the letterforms vary slightly between devices.

No data leaves your device. Reading the file (TextDecoder), drawing the chart and exporting it (SVG and Canvas) all happen in this browser. The e-Stat API is not called and no sharing links are created; download the CSV from e-Stat or elsewhere yourself. Files up to 20 MB and 100,000 rows are supported.

Related tools. To fix garbled CSV text, use the Encoding Converter; to turn CSV into JSON, use CSV ⇄ JSON; to tidy a table into Markdown, use Markdown Table.

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