This article sheds light on a series of Xinjiang maps created by order of imperial Japan’s General Staff Headquarters in 1943. These maps, seventeen in all, offered panoramic views on Xinjiang’s topography, geological and meteorological conditions, ethnic composition, major cities, riverine systems, aviation ports, roads for motorized vehicles, wireless and postal systems, and various resources. Those maps invite the heretofore little-studied question of how Xinjiang figured in imperial Japan’s geostrategy. This article contextualizes imperial Japan’s heightened strategic interest in Xinjiang during World War II, particularly after the closure of the Burma Road, which paradoxically revitalized Chongqing’s Republican regime. These sources inform the argument that the place of Xinjiang in imperial Japan’s geostrategic thinking must be understood beyond the narrow lens of Sino-Japanese enmity. It warrants a world historical perspective. The article examines said maps and uncovers the multiplicity of Xinjiang’s toponyms and ethnonyms that encapsulated parallel and oftentimes contested temporalities. Tokyo’s attentiveness to ethnological understandings of the region’s indigenous populations reflects an aspiration to construct a political demography that tethered indigenous sovereignty to the authority of the colonial state, bypassing the domination of the Chinese Republic in Chongqing.