Maps are not usually for imprinting land. Through maps, we can transport behind in time to know how multitude was structured, how a segment was recognized, a energy structures of that time, and other informative and governmental aspects of a place being represented.
The Japanese Maps of a Tokugawa Era Collection is a value trove for such information. The maps colorfully arrangement information about amicable hierarchies, a prolongation of villages, land claims and critical figures, among other things.
The Tokugawa Era is such an critical time for maps because, adult until a 17th century, maps were meant for a use of a absolved statute chosen only, and mapmaking was rare. When Tokugawa reunified a archipelago in 1600, Japanese cartography began to rise during a most faster rate as people had increasing entrance to information and could some-more simply pierce around a archipelago and a world. The outcome was a far-reaching operation of map options for consumers who were meddlesome in removing to know about their neighborhood, city, nation and a universe during large.
Principally, 3 forms of maps were constructed during a Tokugawa Era:
- Pocket-version: tiny maps that could be hold in both hands, folded and slipped into a kimono sleeve. Perfect for travel.
- Medium size: these maps with adult to one scale on a side, designed to be noticed on a tatami floor.
- Large size: maps that mostly exceeded 3 meters in length. Scholars presupposition that users would mount on tip of these maps to perspective them in vast rite rooms.
If we wish to try a maps some-more deeply, with all a credentials information about Japanese multitude and history, we inspire we to check out a book Cartographic Japan: A History in Maps. The book analyzes several Japanese maps, including some that are in a collection. If we have your UBC Library card, go check it out. If not, we can check out partial of a calm in Google Books.
Some maps from a collection
This map is a Mount Fuji 3-D bird’s eye view, published around 1848. Mount Fuji captivated many pilgrims during a 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, who visited a temples along a way. This map competence have been combined for a people who were not means to go on such pilgrimages. The map afterwards functioned as a approach for people to suppose a dedicated places that they would never see in reality.
Find out some-more about this object by checking a essay “A 19th-century 3-D bird’s eye map of Mt. Fuji, with all a bells and whistles”.
[Fujisan no zu], 1848
Different forms of ships are represented in this map, substantially definition that Yokohama pier was a place for trade with people from opposite tools of a world.
Yokohama onkaichi meisai no zu, 1859
The following picture is usually an mention of a finish corkscrew map. It was combined by Yoshitora Utagawa, an ukiyo-e (woodblock prints) engineer and illustrator of books and newspapers. Can we see a extraordinary sum of this map that represents a procession?
Tokaido meisho zue, 1864
The collection
The Japanese Maps of a Tokugawa Era Collection has over 500 items, creation it one of a world’s largest collection of maps and guidebooks of a Tokugawa duration (1600-1867).
There are many singular and singular items, varying from pocket-sized maps to vast corkscrew format maps. The collection is focused on secretly published and travel-related maps and guides published in Japan during a Tokugawa period. There is universe coverage, nonetheless a infancy of maps are of a whole or tools of Japan.
Kaisei chiri shoho ansha no zu, 1876
Check out some of a prior posts about this collection:
Access and try a Japanese Maps of a Tokugawa Era Collection. You competence be preoccupied with a sum of a maps and find out something new about Japan or maps in general.
Sources:
ASIA 453 001 (UBC)
ASIA 453: Japanese transport novel – maps projects (UBC)
Cartographic Japan: a story in maps
Review by Morgan Pitelka: Cartographic Japan: a story in maps (Project Muse)
