1785 Hayashi Shihei Map of Ezo (Hokkaido, Kuril Islands, Sakhalin and Environs)

A vividly-colored and historically significant c. 1785 Hayashi Shihei manuscript map of Ezo (today's Hokkaido) and environs, including the Kuril Islands, the Kamchatka Peninsula, Sakhalin, and part of Manchuria. Based on the earliest detailed Japanese surveys of Ezo, this map is one of the most important maps of the Edo period, an early manifestation of a Japanese-Russian territorial struggle that is still disputed.

A Closer Look

The map is oriented towards the east with north at left and south (including contemporary Japan) to the right. The islands at the top are the Kurils (Chishima), the constituent islands of which are marked with a small circle if inhabited. The northern tip of Honshu and the domain of the Matsumae clan in southern Hokkaido appear to the right in green. Sakhalin (サカリイン) appears at left, while a nearby part of mainland Asia is labeled 'Karafuto Island' (カラフト島, clearly not an island here), later the Japanese name for Sakhalin, reflecting uncertainty over both geography and terminology at this early stage. A large river at bottom-left is labeled as both Saghalien (its Manchu name, the basis for the name of the nearby island) and Amur (アルミ), with the nearby land (now Khabarovsk Krai) curiously described as a dividing line between Europe and Asia.

Mountains, rivers, islands, bays, and other geographic features are labeled throughout, as are a handful of settlements. The most familiar of these is the base of the Matsumae clan, labeled 'large Matsumae' and 'small Matsumae' (大松前, 小松前), today's Hakodate, which the Tokugawa moved to more directly control from 1779. Shipping lines are noted throughout with their distances in Japanese ri (just under 4 kilometers). Most placenames are written in kana and no doubt were borrowed from the Ainu, who had trade networks extending to Sakhalin and Manchuria. Some are written in kanji with names suggestive of their natural resources (such as 'Metal Mountain' 金山 and 'Metal Giving Mountain' 金出山).

Explanatory notes appear throughout as well. These, again, in some cases, refer to the natural resources of Ezo ('much timber here' 此地大材多) or the approximated land mass of an area or island. Longer blocks of text discuss the peoples, language, culture, and resources of areas more distant from Tokugawa Japan, often in an imperfect or impressionistic fashion. However, the information is accurate in recognizing the replacement of 'Tatars' as the dominant power in the easternmost portion of mainland Asia with Russians (オロシや人) in the preceding years, as well as the encroachment of Russians into the Kuril Islands. The increasing presence of Russians gives these descriptions a sense of foreboding, which is no doubt a major reason why the Tokugawa banned this map and the accompanying text after it was published.

A Small Opening to the World

This map reflects the results of the Ezo land survey (蝦夷地調査) undertaken in 1785 - 1786 by Mogami Tokunai (最上徳内), a critically important step in Japan's efforts to claim Hokkaido and other northern islands (including the Kuril Islands) and prevent their seizure by Russia or other Western powers.

For most of the Edo or Tokugawa Era (1600 - 1868), Japan operated under Sakoku (鎖国, 'Locked Country') policies, where foreign trade and interaction were allowed with the Dutch and Chinese at Nagasaki and through other tightly constrained channels, but otherwise were forbidden to prevent potentially troublesome foreign ideas like Christianity from undermining Tokugawa rule. Nevertheless, some Japanese intellectuals, particularly of the 'Dutch Learning' (Rangaku) School, were aware of developments in the outside world, and the Tokugawa became quietly but increasingly concerned about foreign threats. Whalers, adventurers, and would-be traders from Russia, Europe, and the United States appeared on Japan's shores with increasing frequency at the end of the 18th century.

In response, the Tokugawa moved to exert greater control over the northern region known as Ezo (蝦夷), including Hokkaido, through the Matsumae clan, vassals of the Tokugawa. Some intellectuals like Nagakubo Sekisui (長久保赤水) and Mogami Tokunai successfully advocated for new land surveys and the production of improved maps. But others, including Hayashi Shihei, found that there were limits to acceptable public discussion of geographical knowledge, especially if it touched on politics and geopolitics, and were consequently censored. For example, the present map was surreptitiously printed or reproduced in manuscript into the late Tokugawa period and was censored when discovered (see, for example, our earlier listing 'Hokkaido-japan-1850').

Publication History and Census

This map was originally prepared by Hayashi Shihei in 1785 (Tenmei 5) as one of five maps that served as an appendix to his geographical text Sangoku tsūran zusetsu (三国通覧図説, roughly, Illustrated Complete Survey of the Three Countries), published in 1786 by Suharaya Ichibei (須原屋市兵衛) in Edo. Sangoku tsūran zusetsu was banned soon after publication, the woodblocks confiscated, and Hayashi imprisoned. In the following decades, manuscript copies of Hayashi's text and maps circulated underground among intellectual circles in Japan, leading to variations in the textual descriptions and even some placenames. The present map looks to be one of these manuscript examples, most likely produced sometime in the early 19th century, though it retains the original publication date and publisher information at the bottom right. Whether printed or manuscript, the map is quite rare, especially outside of Japan. However, the cataloging of the map and its parent work is highly variable given the complexities just mentioned, let alone later (20th century) copies and digitization. Nonetheless, we can confirm that manuscript examples of this map are held (outside of Japan) by the Library of Congress, Princeton University, and the University of British Columbia, while complete examples of the Sangoku tsūran zusetsu are somewhat more widely distributed.