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Imagined Peripheries
The World and its Peoples in Japanese Cartographic Imagination
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
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… because the thing-in-itself has no abnormality. Anything unusual will appear, after I myself see it: Abnormality belongs not to the thing-in-itself, but to myself.
Kuo P'u (276-324), Shan-hai ching (Scriptures of the Mountains and the Seas)
On my first visit to England, nearly twenty years ago, I experienced a poignant moment of realization, understanding finally why Europeans called Japan a “Far Eastern country,” for it was then that I first saw a Europe-centered world map: Japan really was a small fringe of islands off at the far right edge of the map, in the “Far Eastern” region, from a European point of view.
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- Copyright © 1996 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
Notes
1. It should be pointed out that a spherical globe will not solve the difficulty: Our power of cognition is not spherical, but flat. We are able to visualize the spheri cal body itself, but can not put together in our mind what is on the surface of the other side of the globe in one plain.
2. It may support the notion of the subjectivity of world maps that the Australians made an Australia-centered South-up world map.
3. This paper will not discuss the other world, but the different countries and peo ples imagined by the Japanese before the late nineteenth century.
4. The Chinese name for China, Chung-kuo, as is well known, means “middle kingdom.”
5. The Sino-centric order was neither universally accepted, nor uniformly effec tive. See, e.g., Ronald P. Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Diplo macy in the Development of the Tokugawa Bakufu, Princeton, 1984, on Japanese alternative conceptions; Morris Rossabi (ed.), China among Equals, Berkeley, 1980, on Chinese foreign relations at the nadir of Chinese power.
6. Shan-hai ching is a book of unknown authorship, though tradition ascribes it to Po-i, a legendary Chinese sage. It is now believed to have been written c.500- 300 B.C.
7. Unno Kazutaka, Chizu no Shiwa, Tokyo, 1985.
8. The Korean Library Science Research Institute (ed.), Old Maps of Korea, Seoul, 1977.
9. Hiroshi Nakamura “Old Chinese World Maps Preserved by the Koreans,” Imago Mundi, IV (1947), pp. 3-22.
10. Kenneth Nebenzahl, Maps of the Bible Lands, London, 1986, p. 41.
11. Nobuo Muroga and Kazutaka Unno, “The Buddhist World Map in Japan,” in: Chirigakushi-kenkyu, No. 1 (1957), p. 5. Sadakata Akira, Shumisen to gokuraku, Tokyo, 1973, pp. 10-28.
12. Five Indias means the division of the terrestrial world into five: the East, the West, the South, the North and the center.
13. See S. Beat, Si-yu-ki: Buddhist Records of the Western World, translated from the Chi nese of Iliuen Tsiang, 2 vols., London, 1884.
14. The change of wording from “Tenjiku” to “Indo” in Japanese occurred in the late nineteenth century and reveals the acquisition of exact geographical infor mation.
15. Chung Huang (ed.), T'u-shu-pien (1577), vol. 29, pp. 50-51.
16. Ochi Toshiaki, “Echizu ni arawarela sekaizo,” in: Nihon no no shakishi, vol. 7 (1987), pp. 299-338.
17. Ibid., p. 320.
18. Funakoshi Akio, “'Konyo bankoku zenzu' to sakoku Nihon,” in: Toho gakuho, 41 (1970), pp. 595-710.
19. See the Chinese school textbook World Geography, Peking, 1984.
20. See the Korean school textbook National Geography (Japanese edition), Tokyo, 1980.
21. Muroga Nobuo, Kochizu sho, Tokyo, 1983, pp. 14-18.
22. There is considerable debate as to whether Neoconfucianism constituted an (or “the”) “official ideology” in early-modern Japan, enjoying the sponsorship of the State. This long-accepted position has recently been challenged by Hori Isao, Hayashi Razan, Tokyo, 1983, and Herman Ooms, Tokugawa Ideology, Prince ton, 1984.
23. Shan-hai jing does not distinguish peoples from countries: both of them are used synonymously.
24. The 21 imaginary human beings are selected following the principle that most of the succeeding works of Shan-hai ching depict the 21 imaginary creatures as the other human beings. Another common feature is that those 21 peoples are called by the names of their countries, except for 19 and 20. It is not easy to dis tinguish the human beings out of the 144 portraits. The portrait of the headless person might be listed as a member of humanity, but the idea was not accepted by the later works.
25. We must withhold judgment on whether or not the portraits of Shan-hai ching were the model of San-ts'ai t'u-hui. Wang Chi's explanation follows entirely that of Shan-hai ching.
26. Wang Chi, San-ts'ai tu-hui (1607), vol. 12, p. 21.
27. Terashima Ryoan, “Wakan sansai zue,” in: I. Shimada et al. (eds.), Heibousha, Tokyo, 1986, vol. 3, p. 281.
28. Moshiri (Ch. Wu-sa-li) is specified as Mosul in Iraq in the latest edition. Ibid., 322.
29. Ibid., p. 368.
30. The Korean Library Science Research Institute (ed.), Old Maps of Korea, Seoul, 1977, pp. 191-196.
31. This map was the last Buddhist map in China which I researched. See Chung Huang (ed.), T'u-shu-pien (1577), vol. 29, pp. 50-51.
32. Oda et al. (ed.), Nihon kochizu taisei: sekaizu hen (The World in Japanese Maps until the mid-19th century), Tokyo, 1975, “Explanatory notes.” This is the latest collection of Japanese world maps.
33. Oda Takeo, Chizu no rekishi, Tokyo, 1974, p. 34.
34. On the very existence of a “Japan-centered world order” in East Asian interna tional relations in the early modern period, see Ronald Toby, “Contesting the Centre: International Sources of Japanese National Identity,” in: The Interna tional History Review, vol. vii, no. 3 (1985), pp. 347-363.
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