Besides dated allusions to "the Japanese mind" (which is the Hivemind that all Japanese are linked to), the "discovery" of Australia by Europeans, blithe references to "pioneers" taking control of that country, narratives of Tokugawa-era national 'stagnation', or ruminations on the degree of "authenticity" of Japanese illustrations of what the world might look like if it were the size of a piece of paper, the paper provides a good overview of Japanese geographical knowledge during the Tokugawa period and Meiji-era participation in colonial fairs.
On the Ricci map's afterlife in Japan, Frei writes:
In 1602, by order of the Chinese court in whose employ he was, the Jesuit missionary drew, what was for China, a revolutionary new map. Based on reports of Italian and Portuguese voyages to different parts of the world,’ Ricci’s map was widely esteemed for its accuracy and scientific exposition, and copies of it were sent from Nanking to various parts of China, to Macao, and almost immediately to Japan. As this map was transmitted to Japan mainly for scholarly purposes and was written in the familiar Chinese script, it reached a wider audience of Japanese intellectuals and cartographers than did the contemporary world-maps from Portugal, Spain, and Holland, which were either gifts for the shogun or passed into the hands of unappreciative bakufu officials, whence geographical knowledge went no further.
The influence of Ricci’s map of the world was accordingly more penetrating and lasting. It served as an important basis for the making of Japan’s first printed world-map in 1645, which, meant for popular education, had all place names spelled in easily readable katakana. In this new world-map, the Southland, or ‘Magellanica’ [瓦喇尼加], still extended around the entire lower part of the globe, not far below the Tropic of Capricorn. But its shape was now drawn with greater consistency, almost as an even strip of land, except for three or four major protruding interruptions in the places where there was now definite geographical evidence of the Australian continent.
On Russian maps filtering into late Tokugawa Japan after the return of the castaway Daikokuya Kodayū, Frei notes:
In that same year of 1792, however, amid all the diligent copying of outdated Dutch world-maps, a new map reached Japan from Russia, which, in the fourth stage of our study, revealed probably for the first time the correct shape of the Australian continent.’ An up-to-date and precise world-map even by European standards, it had been printed on a Russian copper-plate press as recently as 1791. We have already referred to it above as the Katsuragawa Map, named after its translator, the rangakusha Katsuragawa Hoshū 桂川甫周, 1751-1809, who reproduced the map in 1794 with the collaboration of Daikokuya Kodayū 大黒屋光太夫. And here it is worth digressing to recount the circumstances that had allowed this advanced world-map to reach Japan from Russia, for its prompt transmission owed much to the Japanese castaway Kodayū and his repatriation in 1792.
In part due to the influence of these maps, he quotes Yoshida Shōin, the bakumatsu Nihonjinron-influenced revolutionary who wrote in his Prison Notebook (幽囚録):
South of Japan, separated by an ocean but not too distant, lies Australia, with its latitudes situated right on the middle of the globe. Australia’s climate is fertile, its people rich and prosperous, and it is only natural that various countries compete for the profit of that territory. England cultivates only one-tenth of it as a colony. I have always thought that it would be most profitable for Japan to colonize Australia.
Quoted from 吉田松陰全集 II, 105
While the author describes this as seemingly holding "ominous prospects" for the future of British colonialism in Australia (or "for the future of Australia"), if we take a closer look at Yoshida's writings, we see a wider pattern emerge:
日は升 らざらば則ち昃 き、月は盈 たざれば則ち虧 け、國は隆 んならざれば則ち替 る。故に善く國を保つ者は、徒 に其れ有る所を失うこと無からず、又た其れ無き所を増すこと有り。今ま急に武備を修め、艦略具 え、礮略足らし、則ち宜しく蝦夷を開墾して、諸侯を封建し、間に乘じて加摸察加 隩都加 を奪 り、琉球を諭し朝覲會同し比 して内諸侯とし、朝鮮を責め、質を納め貢を奉る、古 の盛時の如くし、北は滿州の地を割 り、南は台灣・呂宋 諸島を牧 め、漸に進取の勢を示すべし。然る後に民を愛し士を養い、守邊を愼みて、固く則ち善く國を保つと謂うべし。然らず坐して群夷が爭い聚まる中、能く足を擧げ手を搖すこと無けれども、國の替 ざらん者は其の幾 と與 なり。
So while elsewhere in the book, Yoshida may well be calling for the colonization of Australia, he's also calling for Japan to colonize (kaikon) Ezo (Hokkaido), as
well as Kamchatka and Okhotsk. He then sees Japan as taking possession of the Ryukyu Kingdom, seizing Korea as a vassal state, moving into Manchuria, and then south
into Taiwan and the Philippines. While this was more or less Japan's colonial trajectory, with the exception of the Russian territories north of Hokkaido, there is no reason to see this as anything other than pie in the sky.
Yoshida provides a clear vision of Japan as a settler colonial power. And while no doubt while Yoshida's great popularity in the Bakumatsu period and into the Meiji may very well have spurred on actual colonial policy regarding at least Hokkaido, he was one of many thinkers during this time period who advocated colonial policy. Decades before, for example, Koga Kokudō (古賀穀堂) in Saga Domain also called for the colonization of Hokkaido and Australia as part of the same colonial venture, and, like Yoshida's proposal, also in the context of Japanese coastal defence.
Entering Meiji, Frei refers to Fukuzawa Yukichi publishing Sekai Kunizukushi (世界国尽) in 1869 describing the countries of the world. This sort of document may be interesting in how, based on Western books and widely published Japan, disseminated what was essentially a colonial view of the world to a Japanese audience.
Finally, Frei describes Japanese attendance at the Australian Intercolonial Exhibition in Melbourne, 1875-76 by Hashimoto Masato (橋本正人) and Sakata Haruo (坂田春雄). Hashimoto in particular wrote a report on the agricultural products of Australia and his racist reaction to some Australian Aborigines he met, who he apparently calls "black devils" (which the author glibly compares to Dampier's and Cook's descriptions of "coal-black savages" and the "wretchedest people of the earth"). We learn that Hashimoto produced a similar travelogue of his trip to the United states. Discussing Australia, Frei does not make reference to Hokkaido, however, it would be interesting to see if he does have anything to say. Both in Japan's participation in an intercolonial exhibition as well as his descriptions of how the British economically developed Australia, it could be quite interesting.
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