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AN ANSWER TO Mr. GEORGE COLLINGRIDGE'S ARTICLE ON

           „THE EARLY  CARTOGRAPHY OF JAPAN"



                                  BY



                        P.  G.  KRAMP,

             Map Curator of the Royal Dutch Geographical Society.
 

  From  the year  1542, when the Portuguese landed for the first time  in

Japan,  to this day it has  never  been  doubted,  that this country was

the selfsame realm, which Marco Polo had made known to Europe under

the  name of Zipangu  1).  On the contrary, as  in the  course of centuries

our  knowledge of those  parts  of the world increased and orientalists

opened up for us also  the native sources, the particulars,  communicated

by  the great Venetian  traveller in the 2d and 3d chapter of the  3d book

of  his  celebrated  work,  are more and more confirmed  and  explained.

Therefore in 1569, when  Mercator drew the new country  on his famous

map of the world  according  to the narratives of St. Francois Xavier and

his  successors2), he added the following words to it: Japan dicta Zipangri

a M Paulo  Veneto, olim Chrise 3). And nearly a century afterwards,  in

1655, an explication of this name was given by the learned Jesuit Mar¬

tin  Martinius, when he wrote on p.  177 of his well-known  Novus  Atlas

Sinensis,  Amsterdam,  Joh.  Blaeu:  „Der eigentliche Nahm Japoniae ist

Gepuen,  welcher den  auffgang der Sonnen bedeutet, oder den Ort dem

Morgen  am  nechsten; M.   P.  Venetus  hat es  Zipangri genant". The

Abbe  Grossier,  editing in  1779  de  Mailla's Histoire Generate  de  la

Chine, also says on p. 410 of Vol. IX: „Marco-Polo parle  aussi du Japon
 

  1) This word is found written in a variety of forms, arising from the different lan¬

guages of the  various  manuscripts and maps, but all are intended to translate the

Chinese term Jih-pen-kwo = the Realm of Japan.

  2) Compare: Ph. F.  von  Siebold, Geschichte der Entdeckungen  im Seegebiete von

Japan. Leyden 1852, p. 5  and  94.

  3) Sheet 12 of the  Facsimile-edition by die Gesellschaft fur Erdkunde zu Berlin,

1891, after the original copy in  the Town-library at Breslaw.