visions of the city, visions of the sea: eighteenth and...

Situations 8.1 (2015): 1-21 ISSN: 2288-7822

Visions of the City, Visions of the Sea: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century European Maps of Nagasaki

Emily Allinson (Leiden University)

Abstract

Maps mould, re-shape, and organise information into visual form, the construction of which depends on ever-shifting motives, purposes, aesthetic norms and desires. This article takes as a case study the mapping of Nagasaki, Japan by mapmakers in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, outlining how mapping was utilised in the construction of a sense of place of Nagasaki from a perspective based in Europe. The mapping of Nagasaki in this period was thus less about Nagasaki or Japan, than it was about a projection of mapmaker and viewer motives, concerns, experiences and perspectives, based in Europe. This research focuses on just two sets of these visions of Nagasaki, as a city and as a port, and identifies how they were crafted, repurposed and re-imagined through processes of copying and translation. It thus also illuminates some of the processes by which European knowledge of Japan was produced and dispersed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and probes into the wider question of the motives and effects of using maps to construct, maintain and disperse imaginations of place. This stands as a helpful reminder that seemingly neutral information is a result of motivated and subjective selection, moulding, and (re-)structuring of material. Keywords: Bellin, cartography, early modern, Europe, Japan, Kaempfer, map, Nagasaki, projection, Siebold

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Introduction

Maps are not neutral, and do not present an objective reality. They are projections of a mapmaker’s subjective spatial, geographic, political and social experience which mould, re-shape, and organise information into visual form, depending on ever-shifting motives, purposes, aesthetic norms and desires. These issues are vital to understanding older maps as historical sources, as they can seem at first sight so utterly different from today’s cartographic material. Despite visual differences, the same questions are significant for maps from any era: what symbols, concepts, images and concerns are projected onto these maps, and in what ways do they affect our imagination of a geographic site? With this in mind this article explores how mapping was utilised in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to construct a sense of place of Nagasaki, Japan, offering a perspective on a trading site in the context of developing trade networks and colonialism. 1 It argues that the mapping of Nagasaki in this period was less about Nagasaki or Japan, than it was about a transposition of mapmaker and viewer experiences and perspectives, based in Europe.

This article identifies exactly how Nagasaki was depicted on maps, with the detail on maps analysed and interpreted in its historical, social and economical context to identify what kinds of issues, concepts and images are projected. Focusing on just two sets of visions of Nagasaki, as a city and as a port, it explores how these visions were crafted, repurposed and re-imagined through processes of copying and translation. Through this small-scale focus, this article probes into the wider question of the motives and effects of using maps to construct, maintain and disperse imaginations of place.

This approach is underpinned by the works of John Brian Harley and Yi-fu Tuan, and identifies mapping as based on subjective experience and part of a process of place-making. This understanding of mapping enables an exploration of the importance of certain influential mapmakers to the vision and creation of a sense of place of Nagasaki. The first case study of this article discusses one mapmaker’s cartographic vision of the city, focusing on the work of Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716). This vision was copied by another influential

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mapmaker, Jacques Nicolas Bellin (1703-1772), and the encoded infor-mation was altered through a process of simplification. The second case study deals with maps that embody the meaning and value of Nagasaki as a port. Here we will focus again on one vision of Nagasaki, created by Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796-1866) and the painter Carl Hubert de Villeneuve (1800-1874). These figures helped to build a corpus of key images of the city, which heavily influenced how other mapmakers in Europe visualized it. Furthermore, their maps project various concerns that align them to Europe-based commercial and trade interests.

Mapping Nagasaki

Nagasaki city is situated on the island of Kyushu, Japan, and today has a population of around half a million. Perhaps most well known as the site of the second atomic bombing in 1945, the city also has a long and lively history of multicultural trade. The establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1868) in the early seventeenth century marks a pivotal time for the city, as, after a series of increasingly restrictive edicts, by 1641 foreign access to Japan has been officially limited, although the term "isolation," often heard in relation to pre-modern Japan, does not reflect the trading realities in East Asia. 2 Specifically at Nagasaki, permission was given to the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie; VOC) and to Chinese traders to conduct trade in the city. The VOC traded from the man-made island of Dejima in the bay of Nagasaki, while the Chinese trading post was called Tōjinyashiki.

The activities of the Europeans in Nagasaki are only one facet of activity that is more accurately described in terms of a vibrant regional trade. Furthermore, although within Europe the VOC alone was permitted to trade out of Nagasaki, it was not the only European party involved in mapping the city. Indeed, the mapping of Nagasaki by Europeans is part of a bigger picture involving mapmakers and mapping traditions across East Asia. Restricting the scope of this article to looking specifically at mapmakers in Europe, the mapping of Nagasaki in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries corresponds to a period in

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which governments had become increasingly centralised in Europe. Grown in power, influence and economy, they had become able to “impress themselves physically on the design and structure of cities,” carried out on the national scale through urban development and restructuring, aided by cartography.3 This was more than a domestic process, as colonial cities in Asia and America were also designed according to transplanted urban designs.4 This process of creating and moulding cities was also woven into the mapping of Nagasaki. Although it was not a colony, and was thus not structurally re-modelled, the re-imagining, re-structuring and re-defining of Nagasaki was accom-plished through its mapping.

As an underlying framework for analysis, this article approaches maps as projections created through a process of place-making which embodies the mapmaker’s subjective experience, based on the works of John Brian Harley and Yi-Fu Tuan. Harley has been influential within the field of cartographic studies since the 1980s, promoting new approaches to interpreting maps, taking into account developments in the fields of art history and social theory. He defined maps as social constructs rather than depictions of a perceived reality.5 Among his many contributions to the field he highlighted the importance of blank spaces on maps. He calls these omissions ‘silences,’ and suggests that while blank spaces on maps can function as an admission of ignorance on the part of the mapmaker, they can also be purposeful. Silences which omit political alliance or religious affiliation, for example, can be shown through blank space, or through scale (making the smallest unit a town, rather than a village, for example).6 For Harley, maps are active in creating, dispersing, translating, and conveying imagination and can guide a viewer’s reception based on the mapmaker’s subjective experience and imagination.

This article also draws from the field of Humanist Geography, and specifically in the work of Yi-fu Tuan. Tuan deconstructs the notions of place and space, describing both as components of environment and discussing processes by which human experience turns space, unknown and unbounded, into place, which he describes as “centers of felt value.”7 In other words, place is created through human experience, and


mapping a space is one process of turning that space into a place, of giving it meaning and value. From a Humanist Geography perspective, maps embed place with meaning and can also cement or legitimize a sense of place that has already been constructed. Harley and Tuan’s two approaches are closely tied, as Harley’s conceptualization of mapping being an expression of subjective experience can be seen as part of a wider place-making exercise: mapping based on subjective experience is part of the place-making process. Then, this sense of place guides the viewer’s reception. This combination of the two approaches is vital to understanding how early modern European maps of Nagasaki work. In the construction of a sense of place of Nagasaki, mapping is utilized as a means of embodying a mapmaker’s subjective experience.

Before delving into a discussion of the maps themselves, a brief word on existing cartographic materials from the period in question. It seems that there were relatively few maps of Nagasaki in contrast to the amount of maps of Japan or even maps of Dejima, a tiny part of Nagasaki, which was mapped extensively from the early modern period to late into the nineteenth century. While there are several elements that might have influenced the number of maps available today, including those that have not survived or which are not publically available, the historical context in which these maps were made also reveals potential answers and helps to contextualize how and why these maps were made. On the one hand it is true that there was an increasing market for maps in Europe. While maps had come to be bought for official use in the early modern period by navigators, government officials, military planners and religious establishments, a growing literacy rate was now encouraging a market for cheap printed goods for the masses. 8 In addition to this increasing level of literacy, materialism began to develop in European urban centres in the eighteenth century, as ordinary people came to acquire more and more consumer goods. Possessions like maps enabled people to store wealth, and could act as financial leverage in hard times. 9 Therefore, an increasingly wide market for maps was developing in this period.

On the other hand, Nagasaki was restricted among Europeans to only those involved with the VOC, and the VOC kept their records and

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maps close. Only mapmakers with ties to the VOC could gain access to the records. Furthermore, the restrictions placed on the VOC traders in Dejima meant that they actually had little access to Nagasaki city, apart from a few notable exceptions.10 They had to rely on Japanese contacts providing them with Japanese maps, which was in theory hampered by edicts that made it illegal for the Japanese to pass on information about the country, especially maps, to foreigners. While this seems to have been widely ignored to varying degrees over the centuries, it might have had some impact on the amount of usable information coming out of Nagasaki.

However, although within Europe the VOC alone was permitted to trade out of Nagasaki, it is clear from a review of existing maps that it was not the only European party involved in mapping the city. For example, mapmakers like Jean de Fontaney (1643–1710), a Jesuit and mathematician, relied on hearsay and information gleaned through other, non-VOC, sources. De Fontaney created a map of Nagasaki in 1708, published in Paris, based on information from Chinese traders he met during his travels Asia (fig. 1). However, de Fontaney’s map shows the Dutch trading post inside the city, not on an (artificial) island, and he also erroneously portrays the Bay of Nagasaki as the mouth of a river.

Figure 1. Map of Nagasaki based on Chinese sources: Jean de Fontaney “Nangasaki appellé par les Chinois Tchangki” (Paris) 1708. (Lutz Walter, Japan: a cartographic vision : European printed maps from the early 16th to the 19th century [Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1994])


This map is an attempt to place a collection of second-hand information together in cartographic form, and the result is an almost imaginary city. In short, maps based on non-VOC material were possible, but again, seem not to have been extensive, presumably due in part to the difficulty of access to information.

Within the maps that were made, have survived, and are publically available there is a clear distinction between those that are based on the city (marking out spatial arrangement and labeling buildings, etc.) and those that are based on the bay. Because there are so few maps available, the ones chosen here are representative because they sum up the information that is encoded in other variations and visions, and because they were copied and re-dispersed across time and across the mapping centres of Europe.

Visions of the city

Perhaps most influential in terms of defining the view of the city was Kaempfer, who has been described as the most important influence on European maps of Japan in the early eighteenth century.11 Kaempfer was a German physician who was employed by the VOC as the medical officer on Dejima from 1690-1692. During his stay he collected information about Japan, which was posthumously published as The History of Japan, first published in 1727 in London.12 There is one map of Nagasaki in his book, based on a Japanese original which Kaempfer copied and added his own notes to (fig. 2).

Kaempfer’s map shows the city on the left and the bay on the right. The top points approximately to the south, although the buildings to the top and bottom of the map face opposite directions, as in the Japanese map. The Japanese original, as is common practice among Japanese maps of the Tokugawa period, is meant to be viewed from above, rather than hung on walls or viewed from one side only. Thus, there is an entrance point to the maps from every angle, meaning that no matter where the viewer stands above the map, they are able to "enter" the map and understand it. However, in organizing Kaempfer’s book, the translator and editor John Gaspar Scheuchzer (1702–1729)

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turned the map 180° so that we view it from one direction with northwest roughly at the bottom, but importantly without correcting the direction of the buildings at the bottom of the map. This decision to have the map with southeast at the top came to dominate European maps of Nagasaki. 13 Kaempfer’s map is thus an interesting mix of European and Japanese mapping traditions, with a set viewpoint for the

Figure 2. Copying a Japanese vision of the city: (above) Japanese map, publisher unknown “Nagasaki ezu” 長崎絵図 (Nagasaki) 1680; (below) Engelbert Kaempfer “La Ville de Nagasaki le Port avec les Environs” (London) 1727. Nagasaki City Council on Improved Preservation at the Historical Site of Deshima 長崎市出島市

跡整備審議会編, Deshima zu: sono keikan to hensen 出島図: その景観と変遷 (Nagasaki, 1987)


viewer but without altering the direction of all depictions. It is in transition, in translation, from one mapping tradition to another.

Returning to the depictions on the map, and despite the removal of certain framing features it remains packed with the details found in the Japanese original. The main part of the city is presented in schematic form, but around the city are many buildings, ranging from elaborate temples to military enclosures (see fig. 4 below, p.13). To the bottom left of the map is a list a-e of key places in the city: prison, notice board for official edicts, the governor’s palace, and the second governor’s palace. At the top right is another list which provides the viewer with information about the city: 87 streets, 20 stone bridges, 15 wooden bridges, 49 Buddhist (“Budsdo”) temples, both inside and outside the city, 5 Shinto (“Sin”) temples, and 7 Yamabushi (“Jammabos”)14 temples. The map creates and conveys the impression of what might be termed the "full life" of the city, which, in addition to the implicit suggestion of habitation through buildings and streets, explicitly depicts several layers of city activities and experiences. It represents multifaceted religious experience through varied depictions of temples and the list of 3 religious orders. The power associated with city-level politics is demonstrated through the listing and labelling of the governor’s residence,15 and the hierarchy of central politics is hinted at through the depiction of the notice board. International trade is represented though mapping of the two trading posts for the “Dutch” and the “Chinese” merchants. Maritime activity is also suggested by the labeling of spaces in the bay near the city as places where the “Dutch” and “Chinese” ships are moored, and by the lighthouse that sits on the edge of the city next to Dejima. Finally, the martial defense of the city is shown by the prison, the only building within the city centre that is depicted with images of buildings, and the labeling of an area of water around a group of islands to the bottom right of the map as “the place where you burn enemy ships.”

Through these many layers of meaning, a chorographic view of Nagasaki is created, a complete and precise depiction.16 This works to make Nagasaki, a city that a minutely small number of people in Europe at the time would ever even dream of visiting, in some way accessible: it

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has the recognizable layers of activity found in cities in Europe making it comprehensible for the European market. It is knowable, as a viewer can identify in how many streets, across how many bridges, and past how many temples one would walk when in Nagasaki. However, the amount of detail also distances the audience in Europe to a certain degree, as much of it requires insider knowledge to decode. For example, how many viewers would have known the difference between Buddhism, Shinto, and Yamabushi? For that matter, how many casual viewers would understand the difference today? This map represents Kaempfer’s experience of Nagasaki, which is perhaps conveyed more readily when viewed as part of Kaempfer’s book, in which his written information supplements his images. The reliance on his book to decode his images places Kaempfer as an authoritative figure with the role of providing information on Nagasaki.

Soon after Kaempfer’s map was first published as part of his book in England, Bellin produced his own version in Paris in 1736. Bellin was a hydrographer and geographer, and produced his first version of Kaempfer’s map for Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix’s Histoire et Description Générale du Japon in 1736 (fig. 3). It is worth mentioning here that the use of older and foreign versions had become a routine means of producing maps from the early modern period, so as to understand Bellin’s copying within a wider context of a culture of copying across Europe.17 Indeed, there was a great deal of reproduction and copying, both within and across mapmaking centres in Europe. While copyright protection was given in some cases, for example, to original surveys and atlases which were asked for by monarchs, cheaper maps were considered fair game for copying.18 It was common practice for mapmakers to purchase and re-use old copperplates so that sequences of maps pulled from the same plate appeared over a period of years, and older or foreign maps were often included in new maps as a cheap way of producing a “new” map. 19 In addition, there are examples of a range of mapmakers who seemingly gained access, by one means or another, to “secret” documents held by trading companies who documented their own voyages overseas. Overall, this culture of copy led to an exchange of information not only within states, but across


the mapping centres of Europe, with Dutch atlases copied by the French, French atlases by the Spanish, and so on.20

Bellin’s version simplifies the original in several ways, first by discarding the extra material around the map. Second, there are noticeable simplifications to the buildings surrounding the city. In place of Kaempfer’s numerous temples Bellin depicts only eleven. Kaempfer’s map marks various areas of habitation across the map, while Bellin has removed this information, and simply placed two small buildings alongside a text, which reads “is inhabited.” Bellin has removed distinguishing information from each of the enclosures and replaced it

Figure 3. Simplifying Kaempfer’s map: (above) Jaques Nicolas Bellin “Plan du Port et de la Ville de Nangasaki” (Paris) 1736; (below) Bellin’s 1763 version (Paris). (Walter, Japan, 1994)

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with uniform building symbols. Third, where each of Kaempfer’s temples is unique, ranging from small shrines to elaborate temple complexes complete with torii (gate found at the entrance to Shinto shrines), Bellin’s are now almost uniform. Whereas Kaempfer names almost every temple by either sect or by Japanese name, Bellin labels only two, simply as “temple.” Fourth, the removal of text from the map is striking. Only a few key points remain marked on the map, such as mountains, the entry to the port and two of the islands. He labels the “Chinese harbor,” but not the site of the Chinese ships. In addition, the list of information (streets, bridges, etc.) in the top right hand corner has been removed and replaced by the text formerly in the bay (a-e).21 He has also added information about maritime activity and defense, such as “stores for canons and powder,” “watchtower (vedets) on top of the mountain” and anchor symbols in the bay. Finally, and importantly, he has added a compass rose designating the orientation of the map. A second version of Bellin’s map appeared in 1763, which was included in travel descriptions and in atlases. In this later version, the details on the map were simplified further. The buildings have been removed entirely, replaced by geometric shapes marking no difference between different types of buildings. Importantly, the map has been cropped so that the length of the bay is shortened. This means that the focus of the map is now firmly on the city centre. Bellin’s maps present not a chorographic view of the city, but a typus, a conventional view of a city on maps.

All these successive changes have altered the layers of activity on the Kaempfer model. The results of these reductions and simplifications are important. First, they reduce life to schematized symbols, allowing the reader to apply their own imagination. The removal of layers of information that might be difficult to understand, noticeably religion, has rendered the city approachable and understandable (fig. 4). In addition, defense has been emphasized, particularly in the prominent storage space for canons and powder. It is probably no coincidence that this preoccupation with defense coincides with the Seven Years’ War (1754-1763) involving the main political powers in Europe and taking place across Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. Bellin’s reductions, simplifications and the emphasis on defense create a map in which a


viewer is able to take cues from the simple shapes and apply their own worldview and experience. A viewer in Europe in this way is free to express their own imagination of what the “temples” or “houses” might be. In this sense, it is not about authority on a subject, but about approachability, presumably for the purpose of creating a sellable map. Second, this model places emphasis on the main part of the city, first by removing most of the activity from around the main city, and then in the later map by cropping the map to exclude much of the bay. This

Figure 4. Simplifications of the map details. Temple complex and military enclosure: (top) Kaempfer 1733 (Amsterdam); (bottom) Bellin 1673 (Paris). (Walter, Japan, 1994)

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strategically focuses on a simplified typus city, upon which a person-alised vision of the city can be projected, encouraging a subjective sense of place perhaps unique to each viewer.

Overall, these simplifications have completed the map’s “translation,” the process of moulding and re-structuring a map from a Japanese mapping tradition to a European one. In the Kaempfer/Bellin set, the first translation of the Japanese original was incomplete, as although the orientation has been altered so that it provides one set direction from which to view the map, the buildings at the bottom have not yet been ‘realigned.’ Next, Bellin translated the image further, altering the orientation completely and changing the information (removing aspects of religion etc.) so that it matches more closely European models. By the final Bellin version we have a completed translation.

The lack of reference to Nagasaki itself comes from the process of copying within Europe. While Kaempfer’s copy of the Japanese map referred directly to Nagasaki through his own experience in the city, the edition published in 1727 had been copied by his editor Scheuzer from Kaempfer’s notes after the latter’s death. The alterations to this and later editions did not refer directly to Nagasaki, and were instead based on European concepts and ideas. Bellin’s maps are copies of an early version of Kaempfer’s published map: copies of a copy. Ultimately, Bellin’s last version from 1763 refers only to a series of copies within Europe. These maps are projections of the European mapmaker, the viewer, and their subjective experiences, enabling multiple imaginings of Nagasaki as a place, which circulate throughout Europe, re-framed, altered and re-imagined. Hence the emphasis on defence, which does not say anything particularly about Nagasaki as much as it depicts a preoccupation that existed with reference to European cities at the time. On the one hand, these copies were born from necessity, as most mapmakers did not have access to Nagasaki. On the other hand, this copying is a strategy. It offers a sense of legitimacy concerning the imagination of Nagasaki, as it refers to an older, established view by Kaempfer, who was an authoritative maker. The referent is no longer Nagasaki, and the city has now become a space upon which multiple imaginings of place can be projected.


These visions of the city reveal the preoccupations and concepts driving both the mapmaker and viewer, and a process of copy and translation that allow progressive input of ideas which maintain the mapping of Nagasaki within Europe. While these maps have focused on the role of Nagasaki as a city, there are also many maps from the early modern period which refer to Nagasaki as a bay and harbour. These reveal another important facet of imagining Nagasaki.

Visions of the sea

As well as images of the city, visions of the sea were common in the mapping of Nagasaki in this period. This preoccupation which lasted well into the nineteenth century is perhaps best symbolized in the mapping of Nagasaki bay by Siebold. Siebold was also a German physician employed as a medical officer on the VOC trading post Dejima. While on Dejima, he managed to gather information and material from Japanese sources: in exchange for medical work, through setting assignments for his medical students, and through contacts made as he took part in a journey to Edo.22 He also worked with artists, notably Kawahara Keiga (1786- after 1860) and Carl Hubert de Villeneuve (1800-1874), documenting Japan in visual form. Following the Siebold Incident in 1826, in which Siebold was caught in possession of maps and other forbidden objects, he was banished from Japan in 1829. Back in Europe, he began to write up his gathered information with the express intention of conveying Japan to people in Europe.23 One particular image which focused on Nagasaki as a bay was included in his book Nippon (1832-52) (fig. 5).

At the front of the image are the outermost reaches of Nagasaki city, busy with detail and activity. The eye is drawn across variously shaped rooftops, over stone bridges and into streets and open courtyards, which bustle with crowds of people moving to and fro. A mass of vessels fills the harbor, from large, tall-masted Dutch and Chinese ships to smaller boats. At the very bottom at the centre an open, brightly lit street lined with wooden buildings leads across a bridge towards a large, open gate. On the street are a few people, many of whom are walking away from

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the viewer towards the open gates. Following these figures the eye is drawn into Dejima, whose fan shape provides a focal point for the image. Dejima is portrayed in minute detail, and people wander all over the artificial island. Beyond this, the bay winds towards the horizon with steeply sloping hills on either side narrowing the field of vision, so that the viewer is drawn towards the horizon. The sea and sky meet at the top third of the image, where rolling clouds bring the eye upwards and out of the image.

The entry point to the image is Dejima, but because of the way the composition moves the eye away from the city and out to the landscape of the bay beyond this is primarily an image of Nagasaki bay. This is a Romantic landscape, with steeply sloping mountains, rolling hills covered in rounded woods. The pristine and still water reflects the picturesque slopes and the dynamic sky above. The upward curve of the clouds at the centre of the image hints at a change in weather, as larger clouds gather in from across the sea. The focus is on nature, not on the city, and on a movement away from social life to solitariness and reflection. This image thus reflects the Romantic artistic movement,

Figure 5. Visions of the sea: Carl Hubert de Villeneuve and Philipp Franz von Siebold “Bay of Nagasaki” (Leiden) 1852 (Nagasaki City Council, Deshima zu 出島図, 1987)


and depicts Nagasaki according to developing European aesthetic norms.

At the same time, the new winds coming in off the sea are also filled with possibility. As much as the movement in the piece away from Dejima and out into the bay brings the viewer’s attention to the Romantic beauty of nature, it also brings a sense of movement into the image, movement out into the open sea. The triangular shape of the crowd in front of the gate creates a funnel effect which is mirrored in the inverted V shape of the bay itself, with the result that the viewer is moved through Dejima and onwards towards the horizon. And yet, once the viewer is at this point, curiosity piqued, the view out into the open ocean is obscured by hills. The viewer is left feeling inquisitive as to what is beyond. The bay invokes a sense of possibility and openness, emotions of wonder, Romanticism, feelings of fluidity and movement. In the context of the nineteenth century, this image acts as a visual link to, or perhaps represents a longing for, wider trade networks. On the one hand, Siebold’s expressed aim in his collecting and documenting was to be able to present Japan to Europe, and this image, with its romance and openness, is an apt metaphor for his intentions.24 On the other hand, he did have interests in Japan beyond the cultural and aesthetic, especially after he had been banished. In the early nineteenth century, there was an increase in Western interest in Japan, indirectly influenced by events such as the industrial revolution and the increasing development of world trade. 25 Siebold tried many times to sell his services to various parties involved in trying to open up Japan to trade with the West, including Russia and the U.S. As Herbert Plutschow states, his political ambition “was not limited to any nation.” 26 He attempted to establish himself as a mediator in the opening up of Japan, and so questions of international relations and trade had close personal implications for him.

In this context, Siebold’s image metaphorically connects Nagasaki to Europe, which might encourage interested parties in pursuing trade concerns, perhaps with Siebold himself at the helm. Whether or not presenting trade concerns was actually Siebold’s aim with this image, the fact that it was made at a time when there was an increased interest

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in Japan meant that there was a market for works on Japan. Moreover maritime connections were an important and recurring theme during the early modern period and into the nineteenth century, meaning that it was an established and usable theme with a ready market. 27 Realigning Nagasaki into European aesthetic norms thus brings the city visually and conceptually closer to Europe, making it a recognizable and seemingly approachable place, rather than a distant geographic site. This manages the imagination of the city as an achievable potential trade site, feeding existing interest and perhaps engaging new viewers through its Romantic vision. Again in this mapping, Europe-based aesthetic norms, trade concerns and interests are projected onto Nagasaki.

Many other images appeared throughout the nineteenth century that copied the Siebold model. It is interesting that even at the tail end of the early modern period, and into the modern era, copy and re-use of images was commonplace. Again, in this process there is a clear effort to establish and maintain the scene according to European concepts and perspectives. Anthony van Otterloo’s image from 1860 is an almost exact copy, except for the removal of some of the more “Japanese” aspects. For example, the houses on the shores to the right on the Siebold version show distinctly Japanese architecture, but in the van Otterloo version these are rendered in the style of provincial cottages. This is true also of Friedrich Steger’s version from 1861. These progressive alterations reduce the “exotic” and foreign elements in the image, and develop an image which becomes more and more in line with depictions of rural Europe. As in the Bellin copies, these alterations create maps which enable a viewer to apply their own worldview and experiences. It is striking that in both the city and the sea images, as the copies progress, “exotic” elements are removed. In this sense, these elements of the map have been translated.

The maps of Nagasaki which focus on the sea emphasise Nagasaki’s role and significance as a port, representing the boundless potential of the sea for trade and networks, once again reflecting concerns and experiences based in Europe. Not only does Siebold’s map provide a different imagining of Nagasaki as a port rather than city, but it also


allows multiple re-imaginings of Nagasaki as a place through its evocative imagery. The subsequent copies allow further re-imaginings of place depending on changes to the Siebold map.

Conclusion

The maps in this article offer a visual perspective on how Nagasaki was seen and imagined in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They highlight the importance of certain mapmakers, alongside processes of copy and translation, who were key to establishing, moulding and maintaining a Europe-based view of Nagasaki. Through its mapping, Nagasaki became a site for projections of Europe-based conceptual, cartographic and aesthetic norms. In Kaempfer’s map of Nagasaki, aesthetic translations from the Japanese original on which Kaempfer’s was based brought it more in alignment with existing European mapping norms, catering to Europe-based commercial concerns. Bellin’s copies, which progressively alter Kaempfer’s map, project political, trade and commercial ideals of the day by removing “exotic” elements to render the city as approachable as possible to a European audience and adding in topical themes of defence. Finally, Siebold’s Romantic mapping of Nagasaki appropriates the city into a European aesthetic form, which may project his own mercantile hopes as well as increasing European interests in trade with Japan.

All these different projections render the maps potentially more approachable to a commercial audience, and base the image of Nagasaki firmly in Europe: stripped of their direct references to Nagasaki through copying and translation, and relying on concerns based in Europe. This projected a European focus on the activities of European powers abroad, which more widely places exploration as an exploration of itself, a means of working out its own concerns, ideas and problems through a visual metaphor. However, this does have wider implications. On the one hand Arthur Jay Klinghoffer has argued, using the example of Mercator (1512-1594), that we should not misunderstand Eurocentrism for more ulterior motives: “Yes, he was Eurocentric, but he was a European catering to European customers. His motivation was more

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commercial than an intentional attempt to marginalize equatorial and southern regions or promote colonial expansion.”28 However, it cannot be ignored that, regardless of intention, the result of Eurocentric self-projection might be colonial expansion. This is particularly relevant to the Siebold map, where romantic falsification of Nagasaki coincides with vested trade and expansion interests. This stands as a reminder that mapmaking is not an objective projection of space onto paper; it is a projection of place, defined by (re-)imaginings.

1 For the purposes of this article, an overarching term is required as a base of a specific culture of mapmaking in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Therefore “Europe” here will refer to the region encompassed by the Church of Rome, including all of western and some of eastern Europe, but not Russia or the Ottoman Empire. C. R. Friedrichs, The Early Modern City, 1450-1750 (London: Longman, 1995).

2 Tashiro Kazui and Susan Downing Videen, “Foreign Relations during the Edo Period: Sakoku Reexamined,” Journal of Japanese Studies 8, no.2 (1982): 283-306.

3 James Elliot, The City in Maps: Urban Mapping to 1900 (London: British Library, 1987), 51.

4 Ibid., 55. 5 Sarah Tyacke, “Then and Now- Recent Views of Mapping in the Early

Modern Period,” (presentation, Sandars Lectures on Conversations with Maps: World Views in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge University, Cambridge, March 5-8, 2007).

6 J. H. Andrews, introduction to The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography, ed. J. B. Harley and Paul Laxton (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 1-32.

7 Tuan Yi-fu, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977).

8 Euan Cameron, “The Power of the Word: Renaissance and Reformation,” in Early Modern Europe, ed. Euan Cameron (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 67; Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, The Power of Projections: How Maps Reflect Global Politics and History (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2006), 39.

9 James C. Riley, “A Widening Market in Consumer Goods,” in Early Modern Europe, ed, Euan Cameron. 257.

Notes


10 Siebold is perhaps most remarkable in this respect. For more details on his

activities outside Dejima, see Katagiri Kazuo 片桐一男 and Mochizuki Yōko 望月

洋子, Shiiboruto. Hebon: Nihon no kindaika o ninatta gaikokujin シーボルト、ヘ

ボン：日本の近代化をになった外国人 (Gyōsei, 1991) and Philipp Franz von Siebold: A Contribution to the Study of the Historical Relations between Japan and the Netherlands, ed. Netherlands Association for Japanese Studies (Leiden: Netherlands Association for Japanese Studies, 1978).

11 Hugh Cortazzi, Isles of Gold: Antique Maps of Japan (New York: Weatherhill, 1983), 48.

12 Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace, “The First Samurai: Isolationism in Englebert Kaempfer's 1727 History of Japan,” The Eighteenth Century 48:2 (2007): 111-24.

13 Lutz Walter, Japan: A Cartographic Vision: European Printed Maps from the Early 16th to the 19th Century (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), 200.

14 Mountain ascetics. 15 In fact, although it is labeled as “c,” it does not appear on the map. Perhaps it

has been forgotten in the process of translation from notes to map. 16 Richard Kagan, “Urbs and Civitas in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth Century

Spain,” in Envisioning the City: Six Studies in Urban Cartography, ed. David Buisseret (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 76-88.

17 Sarah Tyacke, “Map-Sellers and the London Map Trade c1650-1710,” in My Head Is a Map, ed. Helen Wallis and Sarah Tyacke (London: Francis Edwards and Carta Press, 1973), 68.

18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 63. 20 Kurt Raaflaub and Richard Talbert, Geography and Ethnography: Perceptions

of the World in Pre-modern Societies (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 338. 21 Bizarrely, a and b are reversed. 22 Katagiri Kazuo 片桐一男 and Mochizuki Yoko 望月洋子, Shiiboruto.

Hebon シーボルト、ヘボン：日本の近代化をになった外国人 (Gyōsei, 1991). 23 Herbert E. Plutschow, Phillip Franz von Siebold and the Opening of Japan: A

Re-evaluation (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2007), ix. 24 Ibid. 25 Cortazzi, Isles of Gold, 62. 26 Plutschow, Phillip Franz von Siebold, ix. 27 Tyacke, “Then and Now,” 2. 28 Klinghoffer, The Power of Projections, 77.

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