Shinsei yochi zenzu (ALT: Kaei kotei tozai chikyu bankoku zenzu )

An extraordinary Japanese woodblock map of the world dating to 1848 by Shincho Kurihara and Heibe Chojiya. This map, whose title literally translates as Newly Made Map of the Earth represents an important advancement in Japanese globular cartography. As a result of the Sakoku or Chained Country policy enforced in Japan between 1633 and 1853, Japanese cartographers had only the vaguest ideas of what lay beyond their own well mapped borders. What little knowledge available was usually transmitted through Dutch traders in Nagasaki and Chinese merchants who traded with the semi independent Ryukyu Kingdom to the south. Consequently, cartographic conventions common in Europe were slow to penetrate Japan. Until about 1840, most Japanese world maps followed 17th century European maps which tended to show California as an Island and the fictional southern continent of Terre Australis, among other anomalies. This map however, offers a more contemporary perspective generally in line with the most advanced European cartographic knowledge of the period. Here the world is presented in a double hemisphere projection - a style that first appeared in Japan around 1810 - and cartographically is quit

Date

1848

Archive

Wikimedia Commons

Type

map

Original size

5,000 × 2,925 pixels

Need maps for a whole project? Add Find Any Map to Claude and ask for this one by its id: 144290.