1810 / 1936 Hashimoto Conic Projection Map of East Asia and the Pacific

An impressive, large-scale, and historically important conic projection map of the northern Pacific Ocean, originally produced in 1810 by Yamada Zousai and reprinted here in 1936 by Hashimoto Fukumatsu. Yamada's original was cutting edge, combining elements of Western and East Asian cartography amid a somewhat hazardous intellectual environment.

A Closer Look

The northern hemisphere is displayed in a conic projection from Siberia to Alaska. Longitude and latitude are marked in the border and placenames are diligently noted, though often using atypical, idiosyncratic transliterations that are today impossible to reconstruct. There are a few areas that belie the map's incompleteness, especially Sakhalin / Karafuto. This error was derived from somewhat earlier Western maps, especially d'Anville's, which were influential throughout the 18th century. An inset map of North America (北亞墨利) at bottom-right also has some obvious issues. At the same time, his assiduous cataloging of islands, islets, and features in the Pacific, including apparently the Hawaiian Islands (albeit using a mysterious, atypical name チンドウイㇰ島), suggest that at least some of Yamada's information was quite up to date.

As with many maps of the era, Yamada's has been claimed as evidence in territorial disputes between Japan and China. The 'color-coding' of territory appears to label some of the islands between Okinawa and Taiwan, namely the Diaoyu or Senkaku Islands, as part of the Qing realm.

Cartography under Sakoku

Japanese intellectuals who were curious about the outside world needed to tread a fine line in the Tokugawa or Edo period (1600 - 1868). Fearing the subversive influence of Christianity, the Tokugawa government instituted the policy of Sakoku (鎖国), or 'closed country,' which limited foreign interaction to artificial islands off the coast of Nagasaki. In terms of exchange with Europeans, the Dutch were permitted to trade at Nagasaki because they were less interested in religious conversion than the Portuguese and Spanish, the foreigners with whom the Japanese were most familiar. Although non-religious intellectual exchanges were discouraged, a slow but steady stream of outside information entered Japan through the 'Dutch learning' (Rangaku) school.

Along with astronomical, anatomical, and other scientific information, Western geographic knowledge also entered Japan. There it mingled with an East Asian intellectual ecosystem centered on China, which itself had been influenced by Western missionaries, especially the Jesuits. Thus, Yamada's map is the combination of already extant East Asian geographic knowledge, which was then influenced by two 'waves' of Western geography, an earlier one via the Jesuits and Chinese intellectuals, and a later one via the Dutch.

Perhaps more remarkable than its multiple influences is the fact that Yamada and similar cartographers often operated surreptitiously, copying maps by hand to distribute to like-minded intellectuals. Although strict controls on the spread of outside knowledge had been relaxed since the early Tokugawa period, it was still a potentially dangerous undertaking in the early 19th century.

Publication History and Census

This map was originally produced by Yamada Zousai (山田連), about whom little is known, in 1810 (Bunka 7). It was then reprinted by the geographer Hashimoto Fukumatsu (橋本福松) as a supplement to the New Year's Edition 1936 (Showa 11) of the journal Geography (地理學), which was distributed by the publisher Kokin Shoin (古今書院) and printed by Shūbidō Printing Co. (秀美堂). No explanatory notes are provided, but presumably Hashimoto reprinted Yamada's map due to its historical significance, in spite of its relative obscurity. The 1810 original is held by a small handful of institutions in Japan, while this 1936 reprint is only listed among the holdings of the University of Southern California.