Japanese world map with national ship flags (1862)

This map, by an unknown author, was published in Japan in 1862. In the centre is a world map with the outlines of the continents and islands very faithful to reality.

This work was published a few years before the Meiji Restoration in 1868, so it predates the country's opening up to the rest of the world. This is evident in the political boundaries it establishes for different countries, with certain historical nuances but also a large number of errors. It is possible that all the information available to the cartographer to recreate this map came from old Dutch maps, as the Netherlands was the only European country with which Japan had commercial contact at that time.

The bottom left of the map shows four representations of the four hemispheres: south, north, east and west. Surrounding the map are multiple flags corresponding to those used at that time for ships from different countries, depending on their commercial or military purpose.

One remarkable thing about the map is how it uses only bright red to identify Japan, both on the central world map and on the two hemispheres in which it appears.

Sources


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