About Hanko
Hanko explains how the world works with maps, charts and timelines: why prices, currencies and pay move the way they do, why people live where they live, and what would happen if something important stopped.
A hanko is the red seal used in Japan to make a document official. Our seal stands for the same idea: a story that has been mapped, dated and checked. The videos are on YouTube at @HankoMaps. This site is their written companion: each episode page gives the explanation in full, the key figures, the sources behind every number and any corrections.
The three series
- Money Mechanics: how prices, currencies and pay actually move, one mechanism at a time.
- Places, Mapped: why people live where they live, told with maps.
- Day by Day: what-if scenarios played out one day at a time, built from real data.
How an episode is made
Each episode starts from primary and official data where it exists: statistics offices, central banks, international organisations and the original studies. The script is checked claim by claim against those sources in a separate fact-check before anything is animated, and the finished video is checked again. Every number on screen and on this site carries a date, because most of these numbers change.
What the stamps mean
- OUR MATH: a figure we calculated ourselves from the sources (a conversion, a ratio, an estimate). The method is written out on the episode page under “How we worked it out”.
- SCENARIO: a modelled what-if. The starting facts are real and sourced; what happens next is our scenario. It is never news and never a forecast.
- SIMPLIFIED: a chart drawn with fewer points or smoothed lines so it reads clearly. The labelled values are the sourced ones.
Corrections
If we get something wrong, we fix it in public. The correction is added to the episode page with its date, listed on the corrections page and noted in the video’s pinned comment.
Contact
The fastest way to reach us is a comment under the video on YouTube. We read them, and error reports get priority.
Not advice
Hanko explains mechanisms and history. Nothing here is investment, legal, medical or travel advice.