1874 Rigukun Heigakuryo Map of Japan, including Kuril Islands, Sakhalin, and Ryukyus

A large and visually striking c. 1874 early Meiji map of Japan issued by the Imperial Army Academy. It highlights Japan's territorial and imperial ambitions, including claims over the Ryukyu Kingdom, the Kuril Islands, and Sakhalin.

A Closer Look

The Japanese Home Islands and outlying islands are displayed, with prefectures color-shaded. Aside from prefectures, cities are labeled, with an emphasis on coastal cities and ports. Geographic features (mountains and waterways) and rail lines are also illustrated. Hand-written annotations, mostly tracing rail lines, appear in the Kansai and Kanto regions, around Kyoto and Tokyo, respectively.

The map adopts a maximalist perspective on Japanese territorial claims, hardly surprising given Japan's growing imperial ambitions. Prominent at top is Hokkaido, then the focus of a full-scale colonization effort by the Meiji reformers. Insets surrounding the main map highlight further territorial claims over lands that were largely ignored by the preceding Tokugawa (1600 - 1868). These include, clockwise from top-left, the Kuril Islands (here literally as the 'Group of 1,000 islands to the northeast of Hokkaido'), Sakhalin (Karafuto), the Ogasawara or Bonin Islands, the Ryukyu Islands (centered on Okinawa), and the Miyako Islands between Okinawa and Taiwan, which in the Tokugawa period were under loose control of Okinawa, itself nominally a vassal of the Satsuma.

Historical Context

This map was produced early in the Meiji Restoration, which launched the country's military, economic, social, and cultural transformation. The samurai-intellectuals who led the Meiji reforms saw the attainment of colonies as one of the main sources of Western power and something Japan sorely lacked. Starting with easy targets like Hokkaido (already part of the Japanese realm) and the Ryukyu Islands and then moving to the Kurils and Karafuto, colonial development projects were tested that would influence later events in Taiwan, Korea, and beyond.

The Ryukyus presented special difficulties since, unlike Hokkaido, the Kurils, and Karafuto, which indigenous Ainu peoples sparsely inhabited, the Ryukyu Kingdom was long-established, wealthy, and diplomatically connected with China. Although the Ryukyu Kingdom was nominally under the control of the daimyo of Satsuma (vassals of the Tokugawa) from 1609, it retained wide autonomy and maintained tributary ties with the Qing. But following 1868, the Meiji government rapidly shifted from a feudal patronage system to a territorial conception of the nation-state. When a group of sailors from the Miyako Islands were shipwrecked and then murdered by Aborigines on Taiwan in 1871 (the Mudan Incident), the Meiji government took the opportunity to assert its sovereignty over the furthest reaches of the Ryukyus. The following year (1872), Ryukyu was designated as a domain (藩), even as this designation was being eliminated in the Japanese Home Islands. In 1874, Japan launched a punitive expedition against Taiwan, ostensibly as a response to the Mudan Incident but, in reality, to test Japan's growing military capabilities and the resolve of the Qing to defend Taiwan. The Qing were forced to acknowledge Ryukyuans as subjects of Japan. Late the following year (1875), the Japanese government decided to 'dispose' (処分) Ryukyu, increasing its administrative and military presence.

By 1879, the remainder of the Ryukyu Kingdom was formally annexed by Japan. Despite local resistance, vehement protest by Qing China, and efforts by the United States to mediate, Japan's control of the Ryukyus was secured. Japanificaiton efforts were immediately implemented to eliminate local cultures, languages, and identity.

Publication History and Census

The map is undated and unsigned, but it accompanied a publication of the same name (兵要日本地理小誌, sometimes cataloged with the phrase 'Complete Map of Japan' 大日本國全圖 included in the title), published by the Imperial Army Academy (陸軍兵学寮), and published at least twice between 1872 and 1876, including in Edo by Kobayashi Shinbei (小林新兵衛; also known as Suzanbo 嵩山房 and Suharaya Shinbei 須原屋新兵衛) and in Osaka by Yanagihara Kihei (柳原喜兵衛). The present example appears to be the same map as that cataloged in OCLC (21804562) as being held by the University of California Berkeley, Harvard University, and Johns Hopkins University. Maps with the same or highly similar titles dated to between 1872 and 1876 are also held by the National Diet Library, the National Archives of Japan, the National Museum of Japanese History, and the Tokyo National Museum.