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Japanese Colonial Cartography: Maps, Mapmaking, and the Land Survey in Colonial Korea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

David A. Fedman
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Mapmaking was everywhere at the heart of the colonial enterprise. As David Fedman documents, Japan early on prioritized mastery of the highest international standards of cartography in the colonies and dependencies from Hokkaido and Okinawa to Taiwan, Korea and Manchukuo. Not only did precise maps provide a means for heightening Japanese control, but the very process of map making established the Japanese colonial presence throughout the land. Cartography also provided the basis for establishing land ownership rights, a process that frequently resulted in the dispossession of lands from Korean cultivators and the concentration of ownership rights in Japanese hands. APJ

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Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 52 , December 2012 , e5
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
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Copyright © The Authors 2012

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