The eight leading ocean tides (M2, S2, N2, K2, K1, O1, P1, and Q1) have been mapped in Asian semienclosed seas by inverting combined sets of tide gauge harmonic constants and a reduced set of TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite altimeter data. The tidal maps are given on a 0.5¿¿0.5¿ grid with their formal error estimates. Numerical experiments conducted in the South China SEA have shown the inverse solutions to be quite insensitive to changes in the parameters of the a priori covariance functions for both the tidal signals and data residual errors. Once the various parameters of the inversion scheme are fixed, the algorithm is applied to the Sea of Okhotsk, the Sea of Japan, the ''East China'' Sea (including the Bo Hai and Yellow Seas) and the Indonesian Seas. A set of tide gauge constants, not used in our solutions, is then used for comparison. Though these accuracy estimates may be biased because of the uneven stations coverage, we conclude that the inversion of only 21 cycles of TOPEX/POSEIDON data leads to solutions with an accuracy comparable to the Schwiderski (1980b, c) semiempirical model and the Cartwright and Ray (1990) model derived from Geosat altimetry. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1994