Ryūsen-zu
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Ryūsen-zu 流宣図 is a style of woodblock print maps created by the ukiyo-e artist and popular writer Ishikawa Ryūsen (or Tomonobu)(jp) in the Edo period in Japan.
History[edit]
The term Ryūsen-zu refers to maps composed by Ryūsen, but it is usually specifically used to mean Japanese provincial maps made by him. As an epoch-making map style, publishers reproduced or reprinted these maps over and over from the late seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth century, until another popular map style, Sekisui-zu (a map style developed by a geographer, Nagakubo Sekisui,(jp) appeared. Whereas Sekisui pursued geographic accuracy in his maps, Ryūsen created a variety of cartographic productions based on the imagination and experience of an artist and a writer. Ryūsen added new contents to his maps to make attracting productions for the consumers.
The features of Ryūsen-zu suggest that a prototype of Ryūsen-zu was kuniezu. According to the exhibition catalogue Cartography in Japan: Official Maps Past and Present, Ryūsen-zu was a remodel of Keichō kuniezu, published in 1605.[1] Provincial mapmaking was initially a political project by the Tokugawa shogunate. The purpose of the map projects was to enable the government to share official information, such as the locations of domains and provinces, the names of feudal lords, and the feudal lords’ annual incomes, to show off their power. The provincial maps also included big cities, major roads, stations, shipping routes, major mountains, rivers, and other geographic landmarks,[2] but Ryūsen-zu was not simply a provincial map. It should avoid assuming that provincial maps made by an individual artist Ryūsen had the same nature as provincial maps composed by shogunal mapmakers for the style.
Style[edit]
Another prototype of Ryūsen-zu is chizu byōbu (jp) (Japanese or folded screens bearing a Japanese provincial map or the world map). The early Ryūsen-style Japanese maps were mostly in the form of byōbu instead of on a sheet of paper.[1] From this standpoint, it makes perfect sense that, as an ukiyo-e painter, Ryūsen stressed aesthetic values rather than the topographic accuracy of his maps, particularly in his early works. The maps consist mainly of three islands—Honshū, Shikoku, and Kyūshu—shaped by unique wavy coastlines. Ryūsen embedded these islands in a horizontally oblong rectangular frame as a screen panel and used color-coding to differentiate domains, sea, mountains, and other symbols in his maps. Ryūsen produced a multi-color print version, a hand-tinted version, or a black and white version.
Ryūsen originally produced maps of Japan as artworks, but the reception of readers could change the original purpose of works. In fact, Ryūsen’s maps played to popular audiences and that his map productions were pastiches of the various kinds of published geographical information (e.g., the stations of major routes, shipping routes, a distance table from Edo, or a turntable of tides) that would have been available in the late seventeenth century.[3]
Works[edit]
- Honchō zukan kōmoku 本朝圖艦綱目, 1686. (UBC Library Open Collections)
- Honchō zukan kōmoku 本朝圖艦綱目, 1689. (UBC Library Open Collections)
- Nihon kaizan chōrikuzu 日本海山潮陸圖, 1691. (UBC Library Open Collections)
- Nihon sankai zudō taizen 日本山海圖道大全, 1697. (UBC Library Open Collections)
- [Nihon] zukan kōmoku [日本]圖艦綱目, 1697. (UBC Library Open Collections)
- Dai Nihon shōtō zukan 大日本正統圖鑑, 1702. (UBC Library Open Collections)
- Nihon sankai zudō taizen 日本山海圖道大全, 1703, (UBC Library Open Collections)
Further reading[edit]
- Miyoshi Tadayoshi 三好唯義 “Ishikawa Ryūsen-saku Nihonzu: Edo jidai ni okeru besuto serā Nihonzu 石川流宣作日本図：江戸時代におけるベストセラー日本図.” In Chizu to bunka 地図と文化., Hisatake Tetsuya 久武哲也 and Hasegawa Kōji 長谷川孝治, eds. Kyoto: Chijin Shobō, 1989. 38-39. (jp)
- ———. “Iwayuru Ryūsen Nihonzu ni tsuite いわゆる流宣日本図について.” Chizu 地図 27, no. 6 (1989): 1-9. Accessed on March 26, 2017. doi: 10.11212/jjca1963.27.3_1 (jp)
- Yonemoto, Marcia. Mapping Early Modern Japan: Space, Place, and Culture in the Tokugawa Period, 1603-1868. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
External links[edit]
- Take Me There: Maps and Books from Old Japan 古地図と地理書: 東アジア図書館コレクションから. (University of Washington Libraries) (English / 日本語)
- NDL Digital Collections (National Diet Library, Japan)
- World Digital Library (Library of Congress)
- Japanese Maps of the Tokugawa Era (University of British Columbia Library)
References[edit]
- ^ a b Kokusai Chizu Gakkai; National Diet Library (1980). "General Maps of Japan: 6 Nihok kaisan chōrikuzu," in Nihon no chizuten: kansen chizu no hattatsu Cartography in Japan: Official Maps Past and Present exhibition catalogue. Tokyo: National Diet Library. pp. 58, 77.
- ^ Elizabeth Mary Berry states that a map is a distinctive instrument of special representation different from a landscape drawing, a photograph, a poem, or a diary. She argues that Ryūsen’s Nihon kaizan chōrikuzu represented the imperial power in Kyoto and the shogunal power in Edo connected by the Tōkaidō highway. Elizabeth Mary Berry, Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 67, 100.
- ^ Ryūsen-zu was also a cultural commodity illustrated political spaces. Marcia Yonemoto, Mapping Early Modern Japan: Space, Place, and Culture in the Tokugawa Period, 1603-1868 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 29, 40.