c. 1740 – R. & J. Ottens – Imperium Japonicum

Title:“Imperium Japonicum per regiones digestum sex et sexaginta atque ex ipsorum Japonensium mappis descriptum ab Hadriano Relando”
                (The Empire of Japan, divided into sixty-six provinces and drawn from the maps of the Japanese themselves, by Adriaan Reland)
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Description:

A landmark in the European mapping of Japan. It was the first Western map to name all 66 provinces in Japanese characters as well as in Latin letters. Adriaan Reland (1676–1718), professor of Oriental languages at Utrecht, based it not on earlier European maps but on Japanese ones. As a result, many imaginary place names that had crowded earlier European maps of Japan disappeared.

In the note at the foot of the map, Reland explains his sources. His main model was a large Japanese map, eight times the size of his own, which his former student Paulus Collignon brought to him from the library of Benjamin Dutry, a director of the Dutch East India Company. Reland admits that Japanese maps draw coastlines more roughly than European ones, because their makers lacked European instruments. Even so, he made it a rule to change nothing, so that the true names of the provinces would replace the “incredible confusion” of names on European maps. Because his source was a Japanese folding map, Honshu appears long and narrow. His outline of Kyushu, however, was not bettered until the 19th century.

The map shows Kyushu (“Kioesioe”), Shikoku (“Sikoke”) and Honshu (“Nipon”), with Miaco (Kyoto), Osaka and Edo, the southern tip of Korea, Tsushima, Hirado and the Gotō islands. It also shows Sado and Oki, the Ryukyu Islands (“Liqueo”) and the coast of Ezo (“Jedso”).

The Nagasaki inset: the large inset in the lower right shows Nagasaki and the small island of Dejima, “on which is the seat of the Dutch”. From 1641 until the 1850s, Dejima was the only place where Europeans were allowed to trade with Japan. According to Reland, the inset is drawn from an unpublished manuscript map by a Dutchman covering the coast from Hirado to Nagasaki. Its border carries about twenty crests (mon) of Japanese noble families. At the top is a larger crest, which Altea identifies as belonging to the shoguns.

The decoration: it was designed by Jan Goeree and engraved by Balthasar Ruyter:

• Left: scenes of Japanese life, with a samurai, merchants with their wares, a farmer with an ox and a pagoda. A kneeling figure holds a Latin poem praising Japan as the “queen of the sea” that first sees the horses of the Sun rise from the waves.
• Right: a fisherman with his net in front of a junk.
• Centre: angels with a crown and a palm frond stand above the arms of Jean-Paul Bignon, a cross entwined with a vine, with an abbot’s mitre beside them. Japanese porcelain lies at the foot of the pedestal.

The map is dedicated to Bignon (1662–1743), Abbot of Saint-Quentin and councillor to the King of France. He was president of the royal academies of sciences and inscriptions and a patron of Chinese and Japanese studies.

Reland first published the map in Utrecht in 1715. The plate then passed to Joachim Ottens in Amsterdam. This copy is the third state, with the imprint of his sons, Reinier and Josua Ottens.

Publisher:                        Reinier & Josua Ottens, Amsterdam

Cartographer:              Adriaan Reland (1676–1718)

Engraver:                        Balthasar Ruyter, after designs by Jan Goeree
Sheet size:                        64,2 x 54,1 cm
Year:                                   c. 1740
Technique:                      copper engraving

Reference:                      Walter 69

Condition:

Very good, original condition. Contemporary outline and wash colour, with the decorative scenes uncoloured as issued.

 

This is an original antique map published circa 1740 and not a modern copy or reprint

 

On your request I will provide a Certificate of Authenticity