Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
his court to Edo, by that time a thriving city, and renamed it Tokyo, which means 'eastern
capital'.
From the mid 17th century onwards, the shogunate had pursued an isolationist foreign
policy known as sakoku. Economic links were very tightly controlled - for much of the time
the Dutch East India Company held a monopoly on trade between Japan and Europe - and
contact between Japanese people and foreigners was severely restricted. As the government
began to relax the policy in the 1850s, western interest in Japanese art and culture grew rap-
idly.
This colourful map of Edo was made just at the time when Japanese society was starting
to open to contact with Europeans and Americans. It is a woodcut made by three Japanese
engravers: Manjiro Izumoji, Jibe Moriya and Kibe Wakabyashi. Centred on Edo Castle, it
shows gardens, pagodas, temples and shrines, as well as streets and canals. The large block
of text in the lower left-hand corner includes a list of festivals for the indigenous Japanese
religion of Shinto. Many of the map's features look familiar to twenty-first-century western
eyes. The use of colouring - yellow for streets, blue for water, green for parks or gardens
and red for important buildings - gives it a superficial resemblance to some modern western
street maps. The use of a ship in coastal waters as a decorative feature is a common trope on
western maps, including several of the other maps in this topic.
The map came to The National Archives as part of a journal kept by a Royal Navy surgeon
named Charles Courtney. This is one of more than 800 surgeons' journals - many of which
include maps - now preserved within the archives of the British Admiralty. We believe that
Courtney acquired the map in about 1859 whilst serving on board HMS Highflyer during
the Second Opium War with China. Courtney's journal also includes maps of several other
places, including the Chinese cities of Amoy (Xiamen) and Canton (Guangzhou), illustrating
his studies of the relationship between geography, climate and human health. Most maps and
plans among British military and naval records were made or used by the armed services for
their operational or strategic value. Charles Courtney's map of Edo is different: rather than
having any practical function in the business of government, it was collected purely out of
scholarly or cultural interest.
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