5 - Japanese Cartography between East and West

Summary

Abstract

This chapter examines the role of influential Ming texts such as the Sancai tuhui (Illustrated Compendium of the Three Fields of Knowledge) and the Huang Ming zhifang ditu (Administrative Atlas of the Imperial Ming) in Japan, even in the context of Japan’s comparatively direct contact with the cartographic traditions of the Dutch, the Portuguese, and other European lands. The role of Jesuit cartography and the long-lasting influence of Buddhist cosmology are considered within this trans-regional context.

Keywords: Ming, Japan, Jesuit cartography, Ishō Nihon den, Nansenbushū bankoku shōka no zu, Wa-Kan sansai zue

There was significant cartographic influence in Chosŏn Korea from the earlier Ming period, but very little reflection of the explosion of diversity that took place later in the Ming dynasty or the addition of European materials to the existing repertoire. Japan, also linked to the networks of East Asian textual circulation, offers a host of contrasts in its intersections with late Ming publications as well as Western cartography.

While Japan had much looser political relations with the Ming than did Chosŏn, it engaged in a significant amount of both officially authorized and private trade. Products of the late Ming publishing boom reached Japanese hands in processes that have been chronicled by authors such as Ōba Osamu and Peter Kornicki. In the early decades of the Tokugawa, Japanese readers were fully aware that their islands had been the subject of writings on the continent, and there were readers who were keen to peruse these accounts. Scholars like Matsushita Kenrin gathered together texts and maps produced under various Chinese and Korean dynasties, reproducing and critically evaluating them for a local audience. Imported Ming works also played a significant role in shaping the direction of cartography in Japan, serving as direct inspiration for the geographical content and organization of certain encyclopedias and other popular works. Even after a series of bans on Christianity and European works came into force during the 1630s, discussion of the earth’s sphericity and the ‘Five continents theory’ introduced from Europe continued in Japan, not only because Japanese authorities treated maps differently from other categories of Western texts, but also because syncretic Ming works that had assimilated Jesuit writings introduced such ideas completely shorn of Christian content.