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veals how the Japanese perceived the panel five. Eastern Europe and Asia Guinea, which is rendered like an iceberg
shape and space of the world outside their stretch toward the right. Japan, a tiny clus- bobbing in the south Pacific, on panel
own during the early decades of the seven- ter of strangely shaped pink islands—a two. These names represent Japanese or-
teenth century. The elliptically shaped miniature of the fully blown version in the thography approximating the Latinized
map of the world, like a view of the earth other screen—is at the upper right of the place names in Portuguese or Spanish,
from outer space, is isolated by the gold map, rendered larger than its relative size, agreeing with the fact that the map shows
surface into which the map is set. A but nonetheless dwarfed by the vastness the Portuguese and Spanish trade routes
tripod-in-circle seal of the painter Kano of the rest of the world. in red lines issuing from two ports of the
Eitoku (1543-1590) is stamped on the lower The inordinately large land masses Iberian peninsula, Lisbon in Portugal and
section of the gold ground of panel six. near the polar regions in the map of the Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain.
The attribution to Eitoku is not accepted. world indicate that this map is based gen- North America, including Canada,
Of some two dozen examples of maps erally on a cartographic projection devised has three inscriptions on the fourth panel.
surviving from the seventeenth century, by the Flemish mathematician and geogra- Below the left tip of the shortest of three
this work is one of the earliest produced by pher Gerhardus Mercator (1512-1594), green mountain ranges is Furorita for Flor-
Japanese artists. Although the map of the whose navigational map was published in ida, which actually lies considerably far-
world was undoubtedly inspired by Euro- 1569 and refined in 1590 by an English ge- ther south. Amerika is inscribed to the left
pean prototypes, no corresponding model ographer, Edward Wright, but was not in of the middle mountain range, identifying
has been found in Japan. Since Portu- general currency until about 1630. In this the entire continent. And most signifi-
guese traders and the Jesuits were already Japanese version, to maintain visual har- cantly, Nowafuransa is inscribed at the up-
in Japan by the 1540$, we may speculate mony, the regions of the South Pole, per right of the land mass, for "New
that European maps were familiar to the which would have filled the lower areas of France," an earlier name for Canada in
Japanese. The Jesuits report that No- the map, are mostly painted over by the currency after around 1632 when, after
bunaga owned a globe in 1580 and hung a blue of the ocean. sporadic control by the British during the
map of the world in his room in 1581. Both maps are inscribed with place Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), the region's
In the map of the world, oceans are names. Indeed, an inscription on the map predominantly French settlement was re-
painted in dark blue and the strangely of the world has been cited as evidence for stored to France by the treaty of Saint-
shaped land masses in ocher, browns, pink, the earliest possible date of 1592. The in- Germain-en-Laye. The name New France
and white, creating impressive coloristic scription, written on the right edge of continued to be used until 1763, when the
effects. In the map of Japan, the island na- panel two in hiragana (Japanese syllabic territory was ceded to Great Britain. If the
tion is surrounded by blue seas with care- letters), reads Orankd, which is the Japa- inscriptions were written at the time the
fully drawn schematic wave patterns and nese reading of the Chinese name of a no- map was produced, then the map post-
by wafting gold clouds that, like the islands madic tribe, reported for the first time by a dates 1632.
themselves, float on the seas. Japanese warrior and close vassal of Hide- The names of provinces (kuni) are in-
These maps are both informative and yoshi, Katô Kiyomasa (1562-1611), when he scribed on the screen depicting the islands
decorative. The map of the world is berib- led a northern expedition during the Ko- of Japan. The snow-capped sacred moun-
boned by the equator, a decorative straight rean campaign in 1592. The tribe was tain, Mount Fuji, marks the center of
band of alternating black and orange. The known to the Jesuits by 1594. The name is Honshu, while a range of green mountains
tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are lines used in this map for an area northeast of runs along the center of the northeastern
of gold, as are the latitudinal parallels Korea. section of the island.
drawn across the two polar regions. Four Except for the names of provinces in It has been asserted that this type of
continental land masses—Europe, Africa, China and Southeast Asian countries, map of Japan could have been produced as
and North and South America—and the which are written in Chinese characters, early as 1592. The date is based on the con-
Atlantic Ocean are on the third and fourth the rest are in hiragana: Inkiresu for En- voy route drawn in red between the north-
panels, the center of the screen, while gland, Furansa for France; Hatagonun for western tip of Kyushu and the Korean
what must be Mexico and Alaska are on Patagonia, the southernmost of South peninsula, on panels five and six. This
America; and Nowakineya for New

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