Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the mutual emplacement of Europe and Japan through the co-articulation of Jesuit and Buddhist cosmologies on cartographic folding screens in order to offer an alternative reading that challenges the prevalence of positivist and Eurocentric interpretations.

Paper long abstract:

Although clearly based on European printed maps, Japanese cartographic folding screens (sekai chizu byobu) do not represent a straightforward transference of geographic knowledge. This new and profoundly hybrid genre of 17th century painting was characterized by a level of invention and experimentation far beyond any simple notion of cartographic reproduction. Designed as pairs, the screens were not intended to be viewed individually, but rather as two parts that together formed a unified whole. The majority of such sets pair a European-style map of the world with a map of Japan of equal size and splendor, emphasizing the place and importance of the archipelago with in this new cartographic order. Yet even these gilded displays of European knowledge suggest an uneasy balance of worldviews, a tension revealed in the very language in which the maps are named. Many of the world map screens borrow the Latin title, Typus Orbis Terrarum from Jesuit and other European sources. The matching screens, however, situate the Japanese archipelago within an explicitly Buddhist geography. Entitled, Map of Great Japan within the Continent of Jambudvīpa (Nansenbushū dainihon shōtōzu), Japan is explicitly embedded in the iconography and vocabulary of Buddhist cosmology. Japan's place in a classical Buddhist vision of the world is here physically and visibly paired, without any evidence of cognitive dissonance, with that of a European cartographic order in an unlikely union of incommensurate worldviews. This paper analyzes the evidence and implications of the mutual emplacement of Europe and Japan through the cartographic co-articulation of Jesuit and Buddhist cosmologies. By tracing the history and persistence of Japan's place within Buddhist geography and cosmology, this paper offers an alternative reading of Japanese cartographic folding screens to challenges the prevalence of positivist and Eurocentric interpretations.