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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
In this article Walker argues that Japanese imperial processes began much earlier than other scholars often assume; the Tokugawa government was well aware of various geo-political threats that certain countries posed to Japan's national defense in the early 19th century. Specifically, both the Qing Empire and Russia were poised to claim sovereignty over Sakhalin, an island in the North Pacific, through their competing attempts to map the territory. Walker examines the journeys of several Japanese cartographers, especially Mamiya Rinzō, who were commissioned by the Tokugawa government to map Sakhalin first and determine the borders between Japan and Russia. Walker argues that, while European countries were often “centers of calculation” that sought to amass scientific knowledge for the benefit of imperial projects, the Japanese cartographic efforts were an attempt by a “periphery of calculation” to rival these claims. The Tokugawa government's mapmaking activities were not only a way to fend off European colonialism, but used the same technology as the Russians, which allowed Japan to claim that it was a scientifically advanced society and therefore had a right to control Sakhalin. According to Walker, mapping distant lands was “an inherent exercise in state logistical power” because it showed that the state was strong enough to amass the manpower and ships to embark on such endeavors. The imperial processes that would enable Japan to successfully incorporate the southern part of Sakhalin (called Karafuto) into the Japanese empire in 1905 were thus set into motion almost a hundred years prior to Karafuto's colonization.
Walker uses a “center of calculation” to denote an imperial power that was already globally strong and the “peripheries of calculation” to describe territories that had not achieved parity with the imperial powers.
1 See T. Akizuki, Nichirō kankei to Saharin tō: Bakumatsu Meiji shonen no ryōdo mondai, Tokyo, 1994; more recently, T. Akizuki, Nihon hokuhen no tanken to chizu no rekishi, Sapporo, 1999.
2 The importance of not having multiple or overlapping national sovereignties on maps would be clear to Japanese policymakers once they entered the modern diplomatic treaty regimen with the Euro-American powers in the 1850s. Mamiya, by drawing cartographically accurate maps, not only anticipated Japanese empire in the North Pacific, but anticipated one of the tools required in negotiating with the West. On these treaties and the clever Japanese negotiating that went into them, see M.R. Auslin, Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy, Cambridge, MA, 2004, 11-33.
3 L. Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China, Princeton, 2001, 1-3.
4 S.L. Burns, Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan, Durham, 2003; H.D. Harootunian, Toward Restoration: The Growth of Political Consciousness in Tokugawa Japan, Berkeley, 1970; J.V. Koschmann, The Mito Ideology: Discourse, Reform, and Insurrection in Late Tokugawa Japan, 1790-1864, Berkeley, 1987.
5 This sophisticated and compelling argument is advanced in E. Ikegami, Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture, Cambridge, 2005, 46, 47, 230, 231. This is a departure from earlier debates on the topic of the origins of a national consciousness in Japan. Famously, theorist M. Maruyama argued that the eighteenth-century de-centered feudal order inhibited the emergence of a national consciousness in Japan. He submitted that only with the arrival of European ships in the nineteenth century did Japan begin to develop a sense of ‘political solidarity’ and ‘national unity’. For more on this line of thinking, see M. Maruyama, Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, M. Hane (Trans), Princeton, 1974, 327.
6 M.E. Berry, Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period, Berkeley, 2006, 209.
7 T. Najita, Japan: The Intellectual Foundations of Modern Japanese Politics, Chicago, 1974, 58.
8 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition, London, 1991, 163-185. For more on maps and nation-building, see T. Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation, Honolulu, 1994.
9 For another example of people being mapped out of the landscape by others with imperial designs, see K.G. Brealey, Mapping them ‘out’: Euro-Canadian cartography and the appropriation of the Nuxalk and Ts'ilhqot’ in first nations’ territories, 1793-1916, The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien 39, 2 (1995) 140-156.
10 Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise (note 3), 15, 16.
11 Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise (note 3), 5, 6.
12 D. Harvey, Justice, Nature & the Geography of Difference, Malden, 1996, 10, 11, 222.
13 J. C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed, New Haven, 1998.
14 This point regarding a Confucian orthodoxy is a bit of an overstatement. Herman Ooms has demonstrated that the Tokugawa ideology took longer to coalesce and was not as strictly Confucian as often claimed. See H. Ooms, Tokugawa Ideology: Early Constructs, 1570-1680, Princeton, 1985.
15 D.L. Howell, Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-century Japan, Berkeley, 2005, 24, 25, 46, 47.
16 By far the most comprehensive treatment of Japanese social history comes from Amino Yoshihiko. Although he wrote on Japan's medieval years, his books do illustrate the incredible diversity of Japanese society in the late medieval and early modern years. See Y. Amino, Nihon chūsei no minshūzō, Tokyo, 1980; Y. Amino, Nihon shakai no rekishi, 3 Vols, Tokyo, 1997.
17 T. Hora, Mamiya Rinzō, Tokyo, 1960, 38-47.
18 K. Nagahara and K. Yamamura, Shaping the process of unification: technological progress in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Japan, Journal of Japanese Studies 14, 1 (1988) 83-88. On the Chinese origins of many of these hydrologic systems, see M. Elvin, The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China, New Haven, 2004.
19 J.R. Bartholomew, The Formation of Science in Japan, New Haven, 1989, 23, 24.
20 An original copy can be found at the Resource Collection for Northern Studies, Hokkaido University Library.
21 For an English-language biography of Matsudaira Sadanobu and a treatment of many of his conservative reforms, see H. Ooms, Charismatic Bureaucrat: A Political Biography of Matsudaira Sadanobu, 1758-1829, Chicago, 1975.
22 Hora, Mamiya Rinzō (note 17), 47-52.
23 Akizuki, Nihon hokuhen no tanken to chizu no rekishi (note 1), 286.
24 Maps and surveys emerged as just one part of a more comprehensive shogunal policy to assert control over Ezochi and its Ainu inhabitants. For more on Tokugawa policies in Ezochi, particularly with regards to disease and medicine, see B.L. Walker, The early modern Japanese state and Ainu vaccinations: redefining the body politic, 1799-1868, Past and Present 163 (1999) 121-160. On the manner in which Japanese policies of assimilation reconfigured Ainu relations to once-worshipped animals such as wolves, see chapter 2 in B.L. Walker, The Lost Wolves of Japan, Seattle, 2005; see also J.J. Stephan, Ezo under the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1799-1821: an aspect of Japan's frontier history, Ph.D. Diss., University of London, 1969.
25 Astronomy (and its close-cousin calendar making) was among the more prominent preindustrial sciences in Japan. For more on pre-industrial Japanese science, see M. Sugimoto and D.L. Swain, Science and Culture in Traditional Japan, A.D. 600-1854, Cambridge, MA, 1978.
26 For more on the science of Inō Tadataka's cartography, see R. Ōtani, Tadataka Inō: The Japanese Land-Surveyor, K. Sugimura (Trans), Tokyo, 1932; more recently, M. Hoyanagi, Inō Tadataka no kagakuteki gyōseki: Nihon chizu sakusei no kindaika e no michi, Tokyo, 1974.
27 Akizuki, Nihon hokuhen no tanken to chizu no rekishi (note 1), 287.
28 Akizuki, Nihon hokuhen no tanken to chizu no rekishi (note 1), 285.
29 D.N. Livingstone, Putting Science in its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge, Chicago, 2003, 156.
30 A Voyage Round the World, Performed In the Years 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788, By the Boussole and Astrolabe, Under the Command of J.F.G. De La Pe ‘rouse: Published by Order of the National Assembly, under the Superintendence of L.A. Milet-Mureau, Brigadier-General in the Corps of Engineers, Director of Fortifications, Member of the Constituent Assembly and Fellow of several literary Societies at Paris, Vol. 2 (London: G.G. and J. Robinson, Paternoster-Row; J. Edwards, Pall-Mall; and T. Payne, Mews-Gate, Castle-Street, 1799), 18-27.
31 W.R. Broughton, A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean: In which the Coast of Asia, from the Lat. of 35 degrees North to the Lat. of 52 degrees North, the Island of Insu (commonly known under the name of the Land of Jesso), the North, South, and East Coasts of Japan, the Lieuchieux and the Adjacent Isles, as well as the Coast of Corea, have been Examined and Surveyed. Performed in His Majesty's Sloop Providence, and her Tender, in the years 1795, 1796, 1797, 1798 (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies in the Strand, 1804), 274-297.
32 B. Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society, Cambridge, MA, 1987, 215-228.
33 M.T. Bravo, Ethnographic navigation and the geographical gift, in: D.N. Livingstone and C.W.J. Withers (Eds), Geography and Enlightenment, Chicago, 1999, 204, 205, 211, 213, 214, 230, 231.
34 Kären Wigen has demonstrated how early modern Japan's proto-capitalism shaped the spatial development of the Ina Valley, creating, by the early twentieth century, a ‘Japanese periphery’. That is, the Ina Valley transformed ‘from a diverse proto-industrial center to a precarious industrial supply zone.’ See K. Wigen, The Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750-1920, Berkeley, 1995, 12. For more on the geographic imagination in early modern Japan, see K. Wigen, The geographic imagination in early modern Japanese history: retrospect and prospect, Journal of Asian Studies 51, 1 (1992) 3-29.
35 B.L. Walker, The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 15901800, Berkeley, 2001, 138-150. Mogami Tokunai wrote several ethnographies and accounts of his travels, but perhaps the most famous is Ezokoku fūzoku ninjō no sata [1791], in: S. Takakura (Ed.), Nihon shomin seikatsu shiryō shūsei, Vol. 4, Tokyo, 1969.
36 K. Unno, Cartography in Japan, in: J.B. Harley and D. Woodward (Eds), The History of Cartography: Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, Vol. 2, Chicago, 1994, 445, 446. The 1785-1786 survey produced the Ezochi ikken [1784-1790], in: Hokkaido (Ed.), Shin Hokkaidōshi, Vol. 7, Sapporo, 1969.
37 Akizuki, Nihon hokuhen no tanken to chizu no rekishi (note 1). For more on European cartographers and spatial renditions of Ezochi, see A. Boscaro and L. Walter, Ezo and its surroundings through the eyes of European cartographers, in: L. Walter (Ed.), Japan: A Cartographic Vision, Munich, 1994, 84-90.
38 C. Totman, Early Modern Japan, Berkeley, 1993, 484, 485.
39 Walker, The early modern Japanese state and Ainu vaccinations (note 24), 137e139.
40 K. Kubota, Hokuchi nikki (1804). Resource Collection for Northern Studies, Hokkaido University Library, Sapporo, Japan. I am grateful to Tsuchiya Tatsuhide for bringing this document to my attention and for helping to decipher it.
41 J. Ōmura, in: S. Mori (Ed.), Shizanki: Ōmura Jigohei ni yoru Etorofutō jiken, Tokyo, 1977, 266.
42 M.L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London, 1992, 9-15.
43 A. Crosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600, Cambridge, 1997.
44 J.B. Harley, in: P. Laxton (Ed.), The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography, J.H. Andrews (Intro), Baltimore, 2001, 52e55. On the relationship between maps and imperialism, see M.H. Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843, Chicago, 1999; B.E. Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain: Indigenous Cartography and the Maps of the Relaciones Geograficas, Chicago, 2000; I.J. Barrow, Making History, Drawing Territory: British Mapping in India, ca. 1756-1905, Oxford, 2004.
45 Harley, The New Nature of Maps (note 44), 57.
46 S. Ryan, The Cartographic Eye: How Explorers Saw Australia, Cambridge, 1996, 4, 5
47 D. Clayton, The creation of imperial space in the Pacific Northwest, Journal of Historical Geography 26, 3 (2000) 328, 329; more recently, see D. Clayton, Islands of Truth: The Imperial Fashioning of Vancouver Island, Vancouver, 2000.
48 Akizuki, Nihon hokuhen no tanken to chizu no rekishi (note 1), 286; see also D. Matsuda, Hokuidan (n.d.), in: S. Takakura (Ed.), Nihon shomin seikatsu shiryō shūsei, Vol. 4, Tokyo, 1969. Golovnin actually met Mamiya while incarcerated. He wrote: In the meanwhile we formed an acquaintance with a geometrician and astronomer, named Mamia Rinso, who had been sent from the Japanese capital. [He] shewed us his instruments, which consisted of an English sector, an astrolabe, with a compass, a case of mathematical instruments, and quick-silver for forming the artificial horizon, and requested that we would shew him how the Europeans employed these things. He visited us everyday, and frequently remained with us from morning until evening, during which time he gave us an account of his travels, and produced his plans and sketches of the different countries he had visited. We inspected them with the greatest curiosity. The Japanese looked upon him as a very learned man. They always listened to him with the utmost attention, and wondered how he could have travelled to so many different places: he had visited all the Kurile Islands, as far as the seventeenth, Sagaleen, and even the land of Mandshuren [Manchuria], and had sailed through the river Amur.
See Captain Golownin (Vasilii Mikhailovich Golovnin), Memoirs of a Captivity in Japan, During the Years 1811, 1812, and 1813; with Observations on the Country and the People, Vol. 1, London, 282, 283.
49 Mamiya Rinzō's two expeditions to Sakhalin Island are well documented in the secondary literature and, in some respects, are the stuff of legends in Japan. See, for example, E. Akaba, Mamiya Rinzō: Hoppō chirigaku no kensetsusha: Tokyo, 1974, 78-113; T. Uryū, Mamiya Rinzō, Tokyo, 1974, 102-126; T. Arai, Mamiya Rinzō: Nihon sokuchigaku no sentatsu, Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, 1981, 35-50; S. Nakamura, Hoppō senri o yuku: Mamiya Rinzō no shōgai, Tokyo, 1982, 118-128; T. Ōtani, Mamiya Rinzō no saihakken, Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, 1983; A. Koyano, Mamiya Rinzō onmitsusetsu no kyojitsu, Tokyo, 1998, 56-86.
50 Akizuki, Nihon hokuhen no tanken to chizu no rekishi (note 1), 288.
51 See R. Mamiya (with T. Murakami), in: T. Hora and S. Tanisawa (Eds), Tōdatsu chihō kikō, Tokyo, 1988, 116-165.
52 Akizuki, Nihon hokuhen no tanken to chizu no rekishi (note 1), 290.
53 Walker, The Conquest of Ainu Lands (note 35), 134, 135.
54 Livingstone, Putting Science in its Place (note 29), 155.
55 Akizuki, Nihon hokuhen no tanken to chizu no rekishi (note 1), 290-292.
56 Akizuki, Nihon hokuhen no tanken to chizu no rekishi (note 1), 435, 438, 439.
57 Akizuki, Nihon hokuhen no tanken to chizu no rekishi (note 1), 294.
58 M.T. Hodgen, Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century, Philadelphia, 1964.
59 On Ezogashima as the northern edge of the medieval Japanese realm, see B. Batten, Frontiers and boundaries of pre-modern Japan, Journal of Historical Geography 25, 2 (1999) 166-182; more recently, B. Batten, Nihon no ‘kyōkai’: Zenkindai no kokka, minzoku, bunka, Tokyo, 2000; B.L. Batten, To the Ends of Japan: Premodern Frontiers, Boundaries, and Interactions, Honolulu, 2003.
60 T. Morris-Suzuki, The frontiers of Japanese identity, in: S. Tønnesson and H. Antlöv (Eds), Asian Forms of the Nation, Richmond, 1996, 42, 44; see also T. Morris-Suzuki, Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation, New York, 1998, 11-20.
61 M. Yonemoto, Mapping Early Modern Japan: Space, Place, and Culture in the Tokugawa Period (1603-1868), Berkeley, 2003, 6, 67, 101.
62 Morris-Suzuki, The frontiers of Japanese identity (note 60); see also Morris-Suzuki, ReInventing Japan (note 60).
63 Morris-Suzuki, The frontiers of Japanese identity (note 60), 51.
64 For more on this literature, see B.L. Walker, Foreign affairs and frontiers in early modern Japan: a historiographical essay of the field, Early Modern Japan: An Interdisciplinary Journal 10, 2 (2002) 51-55. This essay can also be found in J.E. Hanes and H. Yamaji (Eds), Image and Identity: Rethinking Cultural History, Kobe, 2005.
65 R.P. Toby, Kinsei-ki no ‘Nihon zu’ to ‘Nihon’ no kyōkai, in: H. Kuroda, M.E. Berry and F. Sugimoto (Eds), Chizu to ezu no seiji bunkashi, Tokyo, 2001, 79-102.
66 Yonemoto, Mapping Early Modern Japan (note 61), 78, 79.
67 R.P. Toby, The ‘Indianness’ of Iberia and changing Japanese iconographies of other, in: S. Schwartz (Ed.), Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters Between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era, Cambridge, 1994, 331.
68 L.M. Cullen, A History of Japan, 1582-1941: Internal and External Worlds, Cambridge, 155, 156.
69 J.J. Stephan, Sakhalin: A History, Oxford, 1971, 63-65.
70 The history of disease exchange between Japanese and Ainu is covered in chapter 7 of Walker, The Conquest of Ainu Lands (note 35). On the endemic nature of smallpox and other diseases in early modern Japan, see A.B. Jannetta, Epidemics and Mortality in Early Modern Japan, Princeton, 1987.
71 Howell, Geographies of Identity (note 15), 186-189.
72 Stephan, Sakhalin (note 69), 142, 143.
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