Enduring Encounters: Maps of Japan from Leiden University Library

Volume Editors: and
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 Siebold’s 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 Hiro’o, Edward Boyle, Radu Leca, Martijn Storms, and Uesugi Kazuhiro.

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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 Koeman’s 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.
"This book is an important addition to the history of cartography of Japan. (...) this book provides readers with an excellent opportunity to compare Japanese and Western historical maps, to see the cartographic encounters of the eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, and to identify Siebold’s great achievement in mapping Japan using Japanese sources." – Toshikazu Kaida, National Representative for Japan International Map Collectors’ Society, in: Imago Mundi 77:2 (2025), pp. 232-233.
Asian Studies libraries and Research Institutes, Asian and Global History courses, art and map collectors.
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