NAVIGATING VISIONS

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

Renata Nagy, “Nanban World Map Screens: Reinventing the Image of Japan in the Sixteenth-century,” Navigating Visions: Re:Locations Conference Proceedings 1, no. 1, 2020: 26-38

Toronto, 2020

Organizers Symposium and Exhibition Co-Chairs: Julia Lum (Scripps College) & Brittany Myburgh (University of Toronto)

Conference Proceedings Editors in Chief: Brittany Myburgh (University of Toronto) & Aaron Throness (University of British Columbia)

Re:Locations Symposium and Journal Committee: Natalie Cheung, Laura Facciolo, Anastasia Gordichyuk, Eunbi Lee, Sneha Mandhan, & Alexandre Paquet

Navigating Visions: Conference Proceedings 2020

Nanban World Map Screens: Reinventing the Image of Japan in the Sixteenth-century

Renata R. Nagy, Yale University

The Jesuit brother and missionary, Alessandro Valignano, wrote De Missione in approximately 1590.1 In the book, the fictional characters Leo and Linus are having a conversation about the world with Miguel, a Japanese Jesuit brother who went to Europe in the 1580s:

Leo: “Up until now, Miguel, you have told us about the different parts of the world. Today, however, we have come here together to hear you speak about the world as a whole.” Miguel: “That is why I had the Theatrum Orbis brought. You will find it a great pleasure to study the various maps in it.” Linus: “I am delighted to see this picture of the world, but tell me, where is there a picture of Japan?”2

1 On De Missione and the details of Japanese delegation travel to Europe, see Derek Massarella, “Envoys and Illusions: The Japanese Embassy to Europe, 1582-90, ‘De Missione Legatorum Iaponensium,’ and the Portuguese Viceregal Embassy to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 1591,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series 15, No. 3 (2005): 337- 339. De Missione was published in 1590 in Macao, but had never been translated into Japanese. Even though the book was written by Valignano, he penned it in a way that intended to give the impression that the text was conceived by the four Japanese delegates, Mancio Ito (Mancius), Miguel Chijiwa (Michael), Julião Nakaura (Julianus) and Martinho Hara Campo (Martinus). The book speaks of European culture highly and deems it superior over other cultures. 2 For the full conversation, see Angelo Cattaneo, “Geographical Curiosities and Transformative Exchange in the Nanban Century (c. 1549-c. 1647),” Études Épistémè 26 (2014): 3.

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The question posed by Linus echoes one of the most important concerns for Japan in the 16th century: What is the archipelago’s position in the world?3 This paper attends to this question from the standpoints of Buddhist and European cartographical traditions. Japan had been embedded in the former for centuries prior to its short exposure to the latter in the late 16th century. The cultural encounter between Europe and Japan lasted between c.1542, when a Portuguese ship washed ashore in Japan, and 1613, which marked the Expulsion Act of the Jesuits.4 During these few decades, the Society of Jesus became the most influential catalyst of the cultural exchange between Japan and Europe, of which the aforementioned Alessandro Valignano was the most prominent missionary. He founded the Painting School under the direction of Giovanni Niccolo, where they trained Japanese artists in European art, including mapmaking.5 The school became the center of nanban6 world map screen production. Nanban maps were folded screen maps of the world, usually with a companion screen, most often depicting Japan.7 In the first section of this paper, I will provide a short account of European mapmaking that was pertinent to the Nanban maps produced in a Japanese context. Second, I introduce some fundamental aspects of the Buddhist worldview in which Japan was immersed, and discuss how Japan perceived itself within that tradition. And third, I focus on a specific nanban world map screen

3 The question is first raised by Joseph Faii Loh, “When Worlds Collide—Art, Cartography, and Japanese Nanban World Map Screens” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2013). 4 Michael Cooper S.J, “Prologue,” in Rodrigues the Interpreter: An Early Jesuit in Japan and China (New York, Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1974), 18-19. A violent storm threw a commercial ship off course, and washed ashore three Portuguese traders near Kyushu in either 1542 or 1543. 5 Cattaneo, “The Mutual Emplacement of Japan and Europe During the Nanban Century,” in Portugal, Jesuits, and Japan: Spiritual Beliefs and Earthly Goods, ed. Victoria Weston (Boston College: McMullen Museum of Art; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 27-28. 6 The term Nanban is derived from nanbanjin, meaning southern barbarian, the name by which the Japanese referred to the Europeans. 7 Christine Guth, “The Arrival of Southern Barbarians,” In Japan’s Golden Age: Momoyama. ed. Money L. Hickman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 148-150.

27 Navigating Visions: Conference Proceedings 2020 paired with a map of Japan in the older tradition in order to demonstrate both the European aspects that these maps displayed and the Japanese traditions that they retained. The world maps usually followed a European model rendered through the lens of a Japanese artisan, while the companion screen of Japan retained the older Buddhist traditions, resulting in a culturally hybridized product.8 Although the missionaries’ relationship with the local war lords like Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu was troublesome, such world maps appealed to the shoguns, because they allowed them to rearrange the position of Japan on a global scale, as the country had been previously been diminished in the Buddhist worldview. The nanban maps also created a sense of nationalism, which the shoguns used in their attempts to unify Japan and colonize foreign lands.9 The practice of cartography in Europe experienced major changes in regard to design and projection during the Age of Exploration. Frequent sea voyages and trading necessitated that cartography become more practical and mathematical. As a result, portolan charts (mariners’ charts) became increasingly important.10 Despite its apparent pragmatism, European cartography remained deeply embedded in both religion and philosophy. The (Theater of the Orb of the World) of , which was first published in 1570 in Antwerp, exemplifies the spiritual attributes that characterized maps in the early modern

8 Max D. Moerman, “Demonology and Eroticism: Islands of Women in the Japanese Buddhist Imagination,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 36, No. 2 (2009): 357-361. 9 Cooper, “Toyotomi Hideyoshi,” in Rodrigues the Interpreter, 70-104. and Jurgis Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyō,” in Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 4, ed. John Whitney Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 301-365. 10 Donald F. Lach, “The Printed Word,” in Asia in the Making of Europe, Vol. I (The Century of Discovery) Book 1, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 218-219. Initially, they were Portuguese state secrets; they did not want other nations to learn of their geographical and commercial advancements. Portolan charts were easily modifiable.

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period.11 Even though it relied on the newest scientific inventions, such as the predetermined grid system of Mercator, the abundant textual references also communicated grand ideas about the creation and the Creator of the world, and humanity’s place within this system.12 The ultimate goal of maps, according to the Neo-Stoic philosophy that Ortelius followed, was to aid humans in the contemplation of God.13 This could be achieved by realizing what Denis Cosgrove calls an ‘Apollonian vision’, or a global view, in which the viewer “dissolves the contingencies of daily life for a universal moment of reverie and harmony,” and fulfills his or her role as the microcosm of the macrocosm.14 Ortelius’ atlas became influential to the making of future maps. The now lost wall map by Willem Jansz Blaeu of 1606-07, designed in Mercator’s projection,

Fig. 1. Photo of the lost Blaeu (1571–1638), “Nova Orbis Terrarum Geographica,” 1607. Original copperplate print, ink with hand color on paper, 143.0 x 204.0 cm. Nederlands, Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam.

11 Jerry Brotton, “Plotting and Projecting: The Geography of Mercator and Ortelius,” in Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World (London: Reaktion Books, 2013), 171-174. 12 Lucia Nuti, “The World Map as an Emblem: Abraham Ortelius and the Stoic Contemplation,” Imago Mundi 55 (2003), 38. 13 Ibid, 44-45. 14 Dennis Cosgrove, “One: Imperial and Poetic Globe,” in Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 3.

29 Navigating Visions: Conference Proceedings 2020 displayed a vast visual knowledge of the creation and the mysteries of the physical world (fig. 1). It also portrayed views and maps of twenty-eight important towns, based on the Civitates Orbis Terrarum by Georg Braun and . Both the Blaeu map and Ortelius had considerable impacts on Japanese cartography.15 The former directly influenced the formal designs of nanban world map screens, while the latter spoke to the religious and philosophical dimensions of maps that were also valued in Buddhist map-making traditions.

Fig. 2. Gotenjiku-zu, 1364. Ink and color on paper, 177.0 x 166.5 cm. Horyu-ji, Nara.

In the Buddhist worldview seven basins of water and seven mountain ranges alternate in circles around four landmasses, of which only one called Jambudvipa, which takes the upside down

15 Günter Schilder, “Willem Jansz Blaeu’s Wall Map of the World, on Mercator’s Projection, 1606-07 and Its Influence,” Imago Mundi 31 (1979): 37-39.

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triangular shape of the Deccan peninsula, is habitable.16 At its center is the lake Anavatapva, from which the four main rivers of the Buddhist world flow; the Ganges, the Indus, the Oxus, and the Tarim.17 The rivers might correspond to the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, while the alternating layers of oceans and mountains might correlate with the noble eightfold path. The Buddhist spiritual journey is well represented by the oldest extant copy of a gotenjiku-zu map (Map of the Five Indies, the Buddhist World Map) from 1364 made by a priest called Jukai, that is now preserved at the Nara Temple.18 It shows India as the center of Buddhism, and includes blue spirals that indicate the source of the rivers, and red lines that signal the pilgrim route of the Buddhist Chinese monk, Xuanzang, in the 7th century (fig. 2).19 Followers of Buddhism had to give up their earthly attachments, contemplate, and meditate. While the means might be different, the goal was the same as for the Neo-Stoics; that is, to enter a more divine sphere, or to reach Nirvana. Despite their noble spiritual concepts, gotenjiku-zu world maps tended to over-emphasize the significance of India as the center of Buddhism, and diminished China, Sri Lanka, Japan, and Korea.20 In spite of their peripheral rendering of Japan, gotenjiku-zu images of the world were accepted by Japanese intellectuals and high society as early as the 7th century, when they arrived at the archipelago via China and Korea. In order to overcome its marginalization in the Buddhist world map, Japan started to formulate local maps of the archipelago from

16 Nobuo Murago and Kazutaka Unno, “The Buddhist World Map in Japan and Its Contact with European Maps,” Imago Mundi 16 (1962): 49. 17 J.B. Harley and David Woodward, “Cartography in Japan,” In The History of Cartography. Volume 2, Book 2, Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994), 371. 18 Ibid. 19 Mia M. Mochizuki, “The Moveable Center: The Netherlandish Map in Japan,” in Artistic and Cultural Exchanges between Europe and Asia, 1400-1900: Rethinking Markets, Workshops and Collections, ed. Michael North (Erns Moritz Arndt University Greifswald: Ashgate, 2010), 115. 20 Ibid.

31 Navigating Visions: Conference Proceedings 2020 the 8th century.21 These early maps of Japan were called gyoki maps, named after a Buddhist monk in the 8th century.22 Gyoki maps depicted the provinces of Japan for administrative and taxation purposes, but they also had spiritual significance to the Japanese.23 According to the annual ritual of Tsuina, evil spirits accumulated over the land throughout the year. On the last day of the year it was essential that the imperial court drove them beyond the boundaries of the country.24 If gyoki maps were to serve and underline the importance of this religious ritual, and to assist the work of those involved in the ritual, it would explain why the outlines of the archipelago were drawn in a relatively rudimentary style, as they only needed to depict the relative boundaries of the country to drive the evil spirits away rather than render accurate details. The provinces were represented using rounded shapes, drawn with curved lines. Generally, the maps portrayed Japan in an elongated form positioned from east to west and added a slight northward curve in the eastern end of Honshu.25 Despite the early appearance of the design, there are not any extant copies of gyoki maps from the 8th century. The oldest surviving maps are from the 14th century.26 The religious significance of gyoki maps is also underscored by two other facts. Most of the surviving copies were owned by temples, which were also instrumental in conducting the annual ritual.27 Such an example is the Orthodox map of Great Japan in Jambudvipa of 1550 at the Toshodai Temple in Nara, which illustrated the major travel lines in Japan in red, similar to Xuanzang’s travel on the gotenjiku-zu.28 Unfortunately, no image of the map from the Toshodai Temple survives, but it is highly similar to the one found in the Ninna Temple in Kyoto (fig. 3).

21 Mia M. Mochizuki, “The Moveable Center,” 367-368. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 For more details on the ritual, see Cattaneo, “Geographical Curiosities and Transformative Exchange,” 9. 25 Harley and Woodward, “Cartography in Japan,” 369. 26 Loh, “When Worlds Collide,” 142. The oldest extant gyoki map is in the collection of Ninna-ji in Kyoto of 1305. It is fragmentary: the western half of Japan is missing. 27 Harley and Woodward, “Cartography in Japan,” 368. 28 Loh, “When Worlds Collide,” 136. The map is located in the Tokyo National Museum.

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Furthermore, even after gaining access to European measuring systems and cartographic models, the Japanese did not stop depicting their homeland in the gyoki form. This demonstrates that such a portrayal of Japan was deeply embedded in the mental psyche of the country. In fact, gyoki representations of Japan were so persistent that they influenced the early depictions of Japan produced by Europeans, and not the other way around.

Fig. 3. Map of Japan, 1305. Hand scroll, ink on paper, 34.1 x 121.0 cm. Ninna-ji, Kyoto. Ignacio Moreira, despite his thorough measurements of Japan during his extensive travels around the island, heavily relied on gyoki maps in his charts of Japan.29 Moreira’s map is now also lost, but it lived on in later maps such as the manuscript map of Japan now preserved in the National Archives of Florence, and the Blancus map of 1617.30 Such gyoki-style maps were often paired with nanban world maps, which left behind the Buddhist world view of the gotenjiku-zu in favor of a European perspective, but still retained many Japanese conventions. One such pair of map screens that express European inspiration and Japanese conventions in one is a pair of screens completed at the turn of the seventeenth century by an unknown Japanese artist, called the nanban bunka-kan, now in Osaka (fig. 4). Both screens consist of six panels; one of them depicts a world map, and the other an enlarged view of Japan. What is immediately striking about the

29 Jason C. Hubbard, “The Map of Japan Engraved by Christopher Blancus, Rome, 1617,” Imago Mundi 46 (1994): 84-99. 30 Ibid.

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Fig. 4. Map of World and Map of Japan, 17th century. Pair of six-part folding screens, ink, color, and gold leaf on paper, each 155.0.5 x 356.0 cm. Nanban Bunka-kan. world map is the Latin inscription at the top in capital letters, which reads “Typus Orbis Terrarum”, referring to the heading used by Ortelius.31 However, as Japanese artists used foreign letters only sparingly, its role is probably to signal Western authenticity, and to evince the artist’s knowledge of foreign lands and cultures.32 The reference to Ortelius also proves that the map had to be executed at least after 1590, since that is when Hideyoshi received a copy of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.33 The way that the artist rendered the pictorial space around the map is highly complex. Various levels of

31 Mochizuki, “The Moveable Center,” 122. It is likely that the immediate model of the map was Plancius’ World Map of 1592, rather than that of Ortelius. 32 Ibid. 33 Loh, “When Worlds Collide,” 74.

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internal frames are employed, including: an outer screen border; a central frame to separate the world map; rectangular boxes to depict peoples of the world; and circular cartouches for compasses, hemispheric maps, and polar regions.34 Blaeu’s lost world map of 1607 used subdivisions in a similar fashion. This structure of the nanban bunka-kan screen appropriated the Netherlandish taste for arranging cartographic, navigational, and ethnographic information in a grid system.35 The map depicted sixteen cultures altogether, grouped into three, and further subdivided into two pairs. It portrays representatives of the Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and European cultures, as well as those of imaginary lands. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the inscriptions were in Japanese, which signals that even though the map used several European cartographical features, it was still intended for a Japanese audience.36 The vivid and divine gold in surrounding the maps and their relatively large size (over 1.5 meters by 3.5 meters) reveal an attempt to appeal to the Japanese taste.37 Most important is the understanding of the spherical nature of the earth that is presented, according to which the central point can be at any location on the planet. The mapmaker took advantage of this scientific fact and placed a relatively enlarged Japan at the center of the world.38 This move could not be more telling. While on the one hand the mapmaker managed to neutralize the Chinese and Indian dominance, on the other hand he also succeeded in emphasizing Japan’s divine and global significance by placing it right in the center of the terrestrial realm. To further understand the Japanese conception of their place in the universe, we may turn to the companion screen of the domestic map of Japan. It is likewise set against a luminous gold background. Yet, curiously, the rectangular boxes that depict the different nations now fill up the entire outer border of the map. The intent behind this decision might have been to demonstrate Japan’s continuous acknowledgement of other nations of the world, but

34 Mochizuki, “The Moveable Center,” 122. 35 Ibid., 124-125. 36 Ibid., 126 37 Cattaneo, “The Mutual Emplacement of Japan and Europe,” 32. 38 Loh, “When Worlds Collide,” 79. Other nanban world maps with a Pacific center include the Hosshin-ji, Tokyo National Musuem, and UC Berkeley charts.

35 Navigating Visions: Conference Proceedings 2020 also to emphasize their own importance by positioning these boxes around an enlarged view of Japan, based on the ancient gyoki model. The artist outlined a clear demarcation of the sixty-six provinces in round forms. The coastlines are fairly distorted, especially in the handling of Kyushu. The reference to the Orthodox Map of Great Japan in Jambudvipa further reinforces Japan’s roots in the Buddhist cosmology discussed earlier, but now as a more prominent, globally-significant participant, rather than as a peripheral member.39 Japan had been part of the Buddhist cosmography for almost a millennium prior to its encounter with the Europeans. In this worldview, it was part of an India-centered order, cast to the peripheries of the inhabited world that only consisted of India, China, Korea, and Japan. In order to create and maintain national pride, it produced so-called gyoki-type maps of Japan, which depicted the sixty-six provinces, but had spiritual connotations in the religious life of the country. After its cultural exchange with Europeans in the late 16th to early 17th-centuries, Japan adopted the European representation of the world, but modified it to the needs of a Japanese audience in order to endow Japan with global significance. Nevertheless, in their representations of domestic Japan, which were often companion screens to nanban world map screens, the Japanese artists preserved the original attributes of gyoki maps to demonstrate that despite their participation in the new world order, they were an individual country with deep roots in the Buddhist faith, and would remain as such. Nanban world map screens produced within this short period of cultural encounter, therefore, can be considered hybridized products of two different cultures. Even after the Expulsion Act of 1613, they remained influential in the Edo period. However, despite Japan’s trading with the Dutch, the island nation remained isolated, only to accentuate its individual strength and its rejection of colonization.

- Renata R. Nagy, Yale University

39 Loh, “When Worlds Collide,” 147, 153. The inscription appeared on several 17th century nanban world map screens, including the one int he Tokyo National Musuem.

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References Brotton, Jerry. Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World. London: Reaktion Books, 2013. Cattaneo, Angelo. “Geographical Curiosities and Transformative Exchange in the Nanban Century (c. 1549-c. 1647).” Études Épistémè 26 (2014): 1-30. ——————— “The Mutual Emplacement of Japan and Europe During the Nanban Century.” In Portugal, Jesuits, and Japan: Spiritual Beliefs and Earthly Goods. Edited by Victoria Weston. Boston College: McMullen Museum of Art; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Cosgrove, Dennis. Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Cooper, Michael S.J. Rodrigues the Interpreter: An Early Jesuit in Japan and China. New York, Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1974. Elisonas, Jurgis. “Christianity and the Daimyō.” In Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 4, Edited by John Whitney Hall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Guth, Christine. “The Arrival of Southern Barbarians.” In Japan’s Golden Age: Momoyama. Edited by Money L. Hickman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Harley, J.B. and David Woodward. The History of Cartography. Volume 2, Book 2 (Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies). Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994. Hubbard, Jason C. “The Map of Japan Engraved by Christopher Blancus, Rome, 1617.” Imago Mundi 46 (1994): 84-99. Lach, Donald F. Asia in the Making of Europe, Vol. I (The Century of Discovery) Book 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Loh, Joseph Faii. “When Worlds Collide—Art, Cartography, and Japanese Nanban World Map Screens.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 2013. Massarella, Derek. “Envoys and Illusions: The Japanese Embassy to Europe, 1582-90, ‘De Missione Legatorum Iaponensium,’ and the Portuguese Viceregal Embassy to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 1591.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series 15, No. 3 (November 2005): 329-350. Mochizuki, Mia M. “The Moveable Center: The Netherlandish Map in Japan.” In Artistic and Cultural Exchanges between Europe and Asia, 1400-1900: Rethinking Markets, Workshops and Collections. Edited by Michael North. Erns Moritz Arndt University Greifswald: Ashgate, 2010. Moerman, Max. D. “Demonology and Eroticism: Islands of Women in the Japanese Buddhist Imagination.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 36, No.2 (2009): 351-380.

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Muroga Nobuo and Kazutaka Unno.” The Buddhist World Map in Japan and Its Contact with European Maps.” Imago Mundi 16 (1962): 49-69. Nuti, Lucia. “The World Map as an Emblem: Abraham Ortelius and the Stoic Contemplation.” Imago Mundi 55 (2003): 38-55. Schilder, Günter. “Willem Jansz Blaeu’s Wall Map of the World, on Mercator’s Projection, 1606-07 and Its Influence.” Imago Mundi 31 (1979): 36-54.

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