World maps published in Tokugawa Japan : an illustrated catalogue

Tokyo : Arsmedica and Nagoya : Sankeisha, 2022. English language edition, revised edition. Quarto, illustrated laminated boards, pp. 600, illustrated. Printed in a limited edition of 200 numbered copies. New copy. Text in English with Japanese characters for names and quotes.

The most scholarly and detailed reference books on Japanese world maps from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, with several hundred detailed illustrations documenting the different states and publication histories of the maps. An essential reference for collectors, dealers and institutions with an interest in cartography. 

‘World Maps Published in Tokugawa Japan is a comprehensive catalog of the world maps published in Japan during Edo or Tokugawa period (1603–1868). This includes around two hundred and sixty maps systematically categorized in eight chapters with more than six hundred full-color illustrations, in most of which the toponyms on maps are distinguishable. The criteria of the differentiation of versions, relationships of the maps, and rarity of the maps are also included. This is an English translation of the enlarged version of the Japanese edition, with eleven new world maps discovered in these two years, adding one hundred more illustrations. This book offers the criteria for all of the maps introduced here. Toshikazu Kaida is a doctor who has majored in cardiology and has studied and worked in the Tokyo University Hospital. He has been collecting old master paintings and prints of Dutch and Flemish origin, old maps and astronomical charts, and also astronomical instruments of Western and Japanese origin for twenty-five years. He is Imago Mundi’s National Representative for Japan and a member of the International Map Collector’s Society and of Japan Cartographers Association. Some of his works on the Japanese maps of Japan and world maps have been published on the IMCoS and JCA journals.’ – the publisher