We can get a hint of how the cartographer Ryusen envisioned the use of his maps by considering his choice of a seal with a variant of his name meaning 'drifting ship'. Secondly, I argue for a simultaneous dimension of this map: it enabled imaginary travel across the sea, at a time when this was not physically possible. The iconography of the Japanese ship in Ryusen's world map can thus be interpreted as symptom of a fear of invasion by the Qing Empire proliferating among the urban population which constituted the audience for such a map. Underlying this measure was a concern over an invasion of Japan by the Qing empire, expressed in the intellectual discourse of the period.
This had an immediate impact on trade activity in Japan's only international port, Nagasaki: quotas were introduced for ships trading from China. Five years before the publication of this map, Qing forces had taken over the last outpost of the Ming loyalists, the maritime trade center of Taiwan. Firstly, I interpret this martial stance as projecting the image of a Japan ready for sea-battle against the forces of the Great Qing empire. However, I argue that this map projects an updated worldview specific to seventeenth century Japan, by including the depiction of a ship belonging to the Great Qing empire sailing towards a Japanese ship equipped for war. This map of the world has been interpreted as a mere pastiche of Western cartographic elements filtered through Matteo Ricci's production in China. I focus on Ishikawa Ryusen's 1688 reprint of ‘The General Map of All Countries’ (Bankoku sokai zu). This paper discusses the dual agency, both political and aesthetic, of seventeenth century cartographic production in Japan.
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