Putting Japan on the Map

Miriam Kingsburg:

Part II of the collection is largely concerned with the 18th- and 19th-century rise of commercial cartography. Fed by growing literacy, travel, and urbanism, a market arose for maps of all kinds, including tourist guides, bird’s-eye views, and spatial depictions of current events. A few authors even note the appearance of faux antique maps, illustrating the popular demand for the application of modern technology to the land and cityscapes of epochs past. Ronald P. Toby shows how cartographers inscribed maps of Edo (present-day Tokyo), then as now the world’s largest city, with information about status distinctions, the “most salient reality” of early modern life in Japan. Mary Elizabeth Berry interrogates the Japanese address system. Why, she asks, have urban residents traditionally identified their location by neighborhood (chô) rather than by street (as in Chinese and Western practice)? Although this was (and is) confusing to outsiders, Berry argues that it serves a more important purpose than navigation: it expresses the irreplaceable function and strong consciousness of local community to residents. Even today, the system remains vital: when displaced from their homes by the “triple disaster” of March 11, 2011, refugees organized camp spaces by chô.