Cartographic Japan
A History in Maps
Miles of shelf space in contemporary Japanese bookstores and libraries are devoted to travel guides, walking maps, and topical atlases. Young Japanese children are taught how to properly map their classrooms and schoolgrounds. Elderly retirees pore over old castle plans and village cadasters. Pioneering surveyors are featured in popular television shows, and avid collectors covet exquisite scrolls depicting sea and land routes. Today, Japanese people are zealous producers and consumers of cartography, and maps are an integral part of daily life. But this was not always the case: a thousand years ago, maps were solely a privilege of the ruling elite in Japan. Only in the past four hundred years has Japanese cartography truly taken off, and between the dawn of Japan's cartographic explosion and today, the nation's society and landscape have undergone major transformations. At every point, maps have documented those monumental changes".Cartographic Japan" offers a rich introduction to the resulting treasure trove, with close analysis of one hundred maps from the late 1500s to the present day, each one treated as a distinctive window onto Japan's tumultuous history. Forty-seven distinguished contributors – hailing from Japan, North America, Europe, and Australia – uncover the meanings behind a key selection of these maps, situating them in historical context and explaining how they were made, read, and used at the time. With more than one hundred gorgeous full-color illustrations, "Cartographic Japan" offers an enlightening tour of Japan's magnificent cartographic archive.
About the Author
Karen Wigen is professor of history at Stanford University.
Sugimoto Fumiko is associate professor of early modern materials at the University of Tokyo's Historiographical Institute.
Cary Karacas is associate professor of geography at the College of Staten Island, CUNY.
Reviews
"A treasure trove of short essays on the history of mapping, 'Cartographic Japan' offers a rich range of insights in the mapping of Japanese history across a remarkable range of scales. Among them are neighborhoods, markets, workplaces, cities, regions, colonies and empire, cosmology and religion, and of course various apprehensions of the nation-state. This book belongs on the shelf of anyone who teaches about Japan or who is fascinated by its history, as well as all those fascinated by the search for meaning in maps" – Andrew Gordon, Harvard University
"'Cartographic Japan' revels in how deeply maps have been embedded in organizing Japanese society and its literal and figurative boundaries, shaping knowledge and policies, and even saving lives, for the past fifteen hundred years. Whether carefully describing original mapmaking traditions or explaining why historical maps reprinted in the 1960s unleashed controversy, the fifty-eight short chapters and accompanying illustrations bring Japanese history to life in stories spanning space and time. The authors of this important and ambitious contribution offer scholars, students, and map buffs alike a privileged seat at the banquet table of cartographic history, with access to the plans, hopes, and dreams of an impressive range of Japanese leaders, intellectuals, merchants, and citizens and a handful of the foreigners who made maps matter" – Jordana Dym, Skidmore College
"If a picture paints a thousand words, this book shows how maps tell countless stories of Japan's past. Not only do the fifty-eight short essays and multitude of illustrations in 'Cartographic Japan' offer windows into particular moments in Japan's history, but they also form fascinating visualized narratives. It is an innovative and enjoyable approach to imagining Japan's past beyond simply the pragmatic function of these maps" – Thongchai Winichakul, University of Wisconsin-Madison
