Sailing from China - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 115

You would have no idea that this is Kobe by its location on the Selden map.
Indeed, you would have no idea what any place in Japan is, for the shape bears
no resemblance to Japan as it is or as it appears on any known map, Chinese,
Japanese or otherwise. In addition, the place-names are completely bizarre at first
glance. The first city south of Hyogo/Kobe is not difficult to decipher. The label
reads 'King of Yalima': this is the domain belonging to the daimyo, or lord, of
Arima on the east coast of Kyushu. (Cocks met this lord when he visited Hirado
in 1621, presenting him with a gift of damask from Canton.) Further south from
Arima is a place labelled Shashen wanzi ('Murder Bay'). This one is not too diffi-
cult. The character sha ('kill') looks quite like a simplified version of the character
gu ('grain');makethatswitch,insert ga betweenthetwosyllables, openthefinaln
to na , and this collection of Chinese syllables sounds out the Japanese place-name
Kagoshima - the large bay at the southernmost point of Kyushu. Continuing fur-
ther around the end of Kyushu, we come upon yet another strange name, Shazima
('Killer Horse'). This is the Selden cartographer's version of Satsuma, the most
powerful domain on the island of Kyushu.
Japanese place-names are always written in Chinese characters. Killer Horse
and Murder Bay are not how Satsuma and Kagoshima are written, from which we
have to deduce that the Selden cartographer had no idea how to write these place-
names. Instead he has transcribed how he has heard them pronounced, and not
by a Chinese who knows the proper characters for these names. This hypothesis
gets stretched further by the next example on Kyushu, Nagasaki, the only port that
the Tokugawa government allowed to remain open, and then only to a handful of
Dutchmen, after it closed the country in 1641. The label reads Longzishaji. This
mouthful is more than just a heroic attempt to render Nagasaki, for Europeans, ad-
apting Portuguese usage, knew it as Langasaque. Longzishaji clearly derives from
the Portuguese rather than the Japanese pronunciation. Some Chinese knew both
namesfortheport,forbothNagasaki(writteninitsproperChinesecharacters)and
Longzishaji appear in the Laud rutter. The Selden cartographer didn't. He knew
only the European version. We can't conclude from this that he heard it directly
from a European, but if he didn't, he heard it from people who were involved in
trade with Europeans.
Up the west side of Kyushu beyond Nagasaki lies a place-name that baffled me
for the longest time. It reads Yulindao: 'Fish Scale Island'. Rather than get con-
fused by the meaning, we have to work once again from the sound. Yu is a highly
unstable pronunciation in Chinese as well as being difficult for foreigners to pro-