While Asian and Western cartographies are often considered separate traditions, maps of Japan kept in Leiden University Libraries often show a commonality of method and purpose. Despite the expulsion of Phillip Franz von Siebold from Japan in 1829, the norm was for friendly exchanges of scientific knowledge. One of the highlights of this volume are annotated drafts and proofs of Siebolds map of Japan, published and discussed for the first time alongside Japanese source maps. Five essays by worldwide experts in the history of cartography and of Dutch-Japanese relations accompany extensive catalogue entries for over fifty maps.
Contributors are: Aoyama Hiroo, Edward Boyle, Radu Leca, Martijn Storms, and Uesugi Kazuhiro.
Radu Leca is Assistant Professor of theory and history of art at the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University. Radu is a historian of visual, scribal, and cartographic culture in Japan. After a BA in Japanese literature at Kanazawa University, he completed his MA and PhD in History of Art at SOAS, University of London. His doctoral thesis analysed attitudes towards the outside world, both real and imagined, in late seventeenth-century Japanese urban culture. Among forthcoming publications is Fluttering Ambition: Heteroglossic Geographic Knowledge on a Sixteenth-Century Folding Fan, in Michael Zimmerman et al. (eds.), Dialogical Imaginations, Zürich: Diaphanes.
Martijn Storms studied human geography and planning at Utrecht University, where he specialised in GIS and cartography. He is Curator of maps and atlases at Leiden University Libraries and Project Coordinator for Koemans Atlantes Neerlandici at Brill publishers. Besides, he is National Representative of the Netherlands for Imago Mundi. In 2017 he organized the symposium Mapping Asia: Cartographic Encounters Between East and West in Leiden, which included two exhibitions: Mapping Asia at Museum Volkenkunde and Mapping Japan at Japanmuseum SieboldHuis. In 2022 his book Maps That Made History. 1000 Years of World History in 100 Old Maps was published.
