Mapping Japan: Bruno Hassenstein’s Map of the “Surroundings of Tokyo Bay and of the Volcano Fuji-No-Yama” (1879)

In 1879, the scientific journal Dr. A. Petermann’s Mittheilungen aus Justus Perthes’ Geographischer Anstalt (PGM) presented its readers with a detailed map of the Tokyo Bay area and Mount Fuji, offering more geographical information than other European maps of this region. This map, entitled The Surroundings of Tokyo Bay and of the Volcano Fuji-No-Yama (fig. 1), was the work of Bruno Hassenstein (1839–1902), a skilled cartographer at the Justus Perthes publishing house in Gotha. The idea for this ambitious project was conceived by his mentor, August Petermann (1822–1878), in 1873, who envisioned a map of Japan on a larger scale (Petermann to Gratama 1873). However, it was not until six years later that Hassenstein brought this vision to fruition, meticulously crafting the map throughout 1878 to 1879. Scaled at 1:400,000, this map was not only a cartographic achievement but also served as an addendum to an article by the German geographer and traveller Johannes Justus Rein (1835–1918), which detailed his ascent of Mount Fuji (Rein 1879b) and marked their first collaboration. Hassenstein’s preparation for his first map of Japan involved compiling a diverse collection of Japanese maps that covered various geographic features of both the coastal and deeper inland areas. Given his lack of Japanese language skills, he relied heavily on translations to extract the geographical information from these maps. His cartographical approach included drawing several preliminary sketches, which laid the groundwork for what would become the map of Tokyo Bay and Fuji-No-Yama. The following is a brief discussion of the mapmaking process for Hassenstein’s first map of Japan.

The Mapmaker Bruno Hassenstein

At the age of 15, in 1854, Hassenstein began his cartographic training at one of the leading European publishing houses, Justus Perthes Gotha, as the first student of Petermann, the influential German cartographer. After Petermann’s death in 1878, Hassenstein took over the map editing for PGM, which had been published by his mentor since 1855. With the exception of a two-year stay in Berlin from 1866 to 1868, he worked for Perthes until his death in 1902. Over his 50 years of cartographic activity, he created maps, particularly of Africa and Japan, as well as map sheets of Central Asia that recorded the routes of the explorer Sven Hedin (1865–1952) (Smolarski/Weigel 2018: 110f.). Driven by both professional and personal interest, Hassenstein dedicated himself intensively to mapping Japan in the Meiji period (1868–1912), when Japanese society underwent major changes and reformations.

Collecting Geographical Information about the Tokyo Bay Area and Mount Fuji

The first step in working on a map at the Justus Perthes publishing house was collecting geographical information about a certain region. The sources of geographical information were travellers and their accounts, route maps, coordinates, and place names gathered from locals. Since Petermann initiated the project of mapping Japan in 1873, European travel accounts and maps depicting the Tokyo Bay area and Mount Fuji were already available at the publishing house. In 1861, an article and a map about the ascent of Mount Fuji by the English diplomat to Japan Rutherford Alcock (1809–1897) was published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society in London (JRGS). Both the journal and the map can be found in the Perthes Collection (fig. 2). Hassenstein also had access to Alcock’s The Capital of the Tycoon, published in 1863, which includes a general map of Japan. However, since these maps and travel reports by Alcock were made in the early 1860s, a subsequent itinerary map in the JRGS from 1871 was considered “worthless for cartography” (“ohne Werth für die Kartographie”) by Hassenstein, as indicated in the lower right corner of the map stored in the Collection (Murray 1871). Consequently, Hassenstein started gathering new material for his first map of Japan.

Georg Freiherr von Schleinitz and Johannes Justus Rein

The Perthes mapmaker had two main sources for collecting new materials. Georg Freiherr von Schleinitz (1834–1910), a Prussian naval officer and hydrographer, was the initial provider of Japanese sea charts. Schleinitz travelled to Japan as a member of the Prussian expedition to East Asia in 1860/61. The Prussian expedition had two objectives: on the one hand, Prussia aimed to demonstrate its military strength and conclude unequal treaties with Japan; on the other hand, it was a scientific expedition. Scholars from the fields of botany, biology, and geology were part of this expedition (Dobson/Saaler 2011: 17–21). During its stay in Japan, the expedition acquired numerous objects for the Prussian Royal Library, including books, picture scrolls, and maps. On 30 July 1879, Hassenstein wrote a letter to Schleinitz, who was then residing in Berlin at the Hydrographical Bureau, asking if he could send some translated Japanese maps that showed the ports between Shimizu and Edo (now Tokyo) (Hassenstein to Schleinitz 1879a). Schleinitz sent several translated Japanese sea charts to Hassenstein, who used them to draw the coastline for his map of the Tokyo Bay and Fuji-No-Yama. Unfortunately, apart from a handful of letters between Hassenstein and Schleinitz, none of the hydrographic maps is in the Perthes Collection today. After working with the sea charts, Hassenstein likely sent them back to Schleinitz.

The second source for Japanese maps was Johannes Justus Rein, who travelled in Japan from 1873 to 1875 on behalf of the Prussian Ministry of Trade. His main task was to collect information about the Japanese industry. However, during his stay, Rein accumulated dozens of maps, as noted in his meticulously kept diary. Among these was the Map of the 13 Provinces from which Mount Fuji Is Visible (Rein 2021: 256). Rein likely acquired this map at one of the many local exhibitions he attended with his Japanese teacher, translator, and companion Sanda Tadashi (1847–1905). The price of the map is not recorded. In a letter to his wife, Rein mentioned buying a large Japanese map for one dollar, without specifying whether it was the Map of the 13 Provinces (Conrad 2006: 162). In early September 1875, Rein concluded his stay in Japan. Before his departure, he shipped several cases of collected items from Yokohama to various locations in Germany (ibid.: 383). One of these cases likely contained the Map of the 13 Provinces. Finally, Rein sent it together with eight other maps of Japanese provinces to Hassenstein in February 1879.

The “Map of the 13 Provinces”

Published in 1843, during the late Edo period (1600–1868), its creator Akiyama Nagatoshi designed the Map of the 13 Provinces (fig. 3) as a route map, inspired by his childhood travels. During the Edo period, the development of main roads like the Tōkaidō and Nakasendō facilitated a flourishing travel culture, marked by strategically placed stations for lodging and barriers for safety and oversight. Japan’s political system of alternate attendance policy (sankin kōtei) required feudal lords and their retainers (daimyo and samurai) to regularly travel between their domains and Edo, promoting a vibrant movement of people and goods, with commoners requiring special permits for travel, often for pilgrimages to significant cultural and religious sites. This political system also created a market for travel maps (dōchūzu) (Goree 2016: 108). By the early 19^th century, there were printed maps of famous places, such as temples, shrines or hot springs, maps of pilgrimage routes and maps covering the entire country.

The Map of the 13 Provinces was well-received in Japan, undergoing multiple editions until the Meiji period; even a smaller copperplate version was produced (Nanba 1970). The map was also known outside Japan. Ernest Mason Satow (1834–1929), a British diplomat to Japan, described it 1881 in his Handbook for Travellers in Central & Northern Japan as “an excellent travelling map, of the old style […]” (Satow 1881: xiv). It is quite interesting that this map was so welcomed by travellers, given its large size: 155 by 175 cm. However, travellers could fold the map so that a single sheet would have only the size of 26 by 18 cm.

In addition to topographical features, the Map of the 13 Provinces depicts the borders of the provinces in black. Red rectangles with black outlines indicate the names of the provinces, red squares with black outlines represent large castle towns, red ovals denote fortress towns, yellow rectangles mark the names of districts, and blank ovals with black outlines signify villages. Roads are shown in red. Also included are black-outlined symbols for battlefields, hot springs, lighthouses, Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, and guest houses. This was distinctive for Japanese maps, which typically used a minimal number of visual keys alongside a sophisticated combination of colours and shapes to represent administrative units (Lange 2021: 42).

Although Akiyama did not specify which materials he used to draw this map, it is possible that he utilized various types of maps available at the time to get geographical information. For instance, there was already a substantial body of cartographical material mapping Japan: kuni ezu, edo ezu, and dōchūzu. Kuni ezu are manuscript maps of a single province that displayed knowledge about agricultural resources and settlements in Tokugawa-ruled Japan (Wigen 2010: 25f.). Edo ezu are maps from the capital Edo. Dōchūzu are travel maps. Japanese maps that solely depicted Mount Fuji, called Fujisan no zu, appeared not until a couple of years after the Map of the 13 Provinces was published. Akiyama could draw from this existing corpus of maps. Overall, his Map of the 13 Provinces appears to be a combination of kuni ezu and dōchūzu, given the fact that geographical information about shrines, temples, guest houses, hot springs, rice fields, and historical battlefields are found on the map.

The Sacred Mountain in the “Map of the 13 Provinces”

One particular feature of the Map of the 13 Provinces is its portrayal of Mount Fuji. It was the first time that Mount Fuji was depicted from a bird’s eye perspective in Japanese cartography, where it had typically been depicted as a two-dimensional triangle. In Akiyama’s map, however, Mount Fuji is drawn in the keba style, characterized as a symmetrical circle, drawn in wavy lines in black ink from the base to the peak of the mountain, and coloured yellow/gold. This colour, combined with the three routes to ascend Mount Fuji, symbolizes the mountain’s sacredness in relation to the Japanese mountain ascetic practice of Shugendō. Shugendō, which still exists in Japan, is a syncretic folk religion incorporating Buddhist, Shintoist, and Daoist elements. Its practitioners, known as yamabushi and shugenja, sought supernatural powers through rituals in the mountains involving activities like walking on fire, chanting sutras, and divination (Hitoshi 2001). Commonly, only male practitioners of Shugendō were allowed to ascend the holy mountains. Female pilgrims were officially permitted to climb Mount Fuji and other holy mountains in Japan only with the onset of the Meiji period.

Translating Japanese Maps

After Rein and Schleinitz sent their maps to Hassenstein in Gotha, he required additional help with the Japanese translation. Although he already possessed the translated hydrographical charts from Schleinitz, Hassenstein also needed a translated version of the Map of the 13 Provinces to extract the geographical information of the inland areas. Therefore, Rein translated some names of rivers, mountains, and places on the Map of the 13 Provinces (Rein to Hassenstein 1879a). Moreover, the map was sent to Rein’s former travel companion Sanda Tadashi, who was working as a consulate secretary in London, to translate the symbols in the map legend (Hassenstein to Sanda 1879b). Thus, Hassenstein was now able to identify the symbols representing the administrative units on the map. Additionally, he recorded the names of provinces that were not translated along with basic transcriptions of Japanese terms for mountain, river, and bay in his working notes. Since Hassenstein had never travelled to Japan and did not speak Japanese, he also relied on Rein for proofreading the translated Japanese words. This is quite surprising, since Rein was not fluent in Japanese.

Making Sketches and Transferring Geographical Knowledge

Subsequent to the process of translating the Map of the 13 Provinces, Hassenstein began making multiple sketches for his map of Tokyo Bay and Fuji-No-Yama. Initially, trigonometric calculations were utilized to condense the Map of the 13 Provinces. The first sketch aimed to capture the basic geographical outline of the map, featuring select places, rivers, and streets. Another sketch transferred additional geographical details such as rivers, towns, battlefields, and mountains from the original map, and notably included Mount Fuji drawn as a circle with a pencil, also indicating the stages of ascending the mountain (fig. 4). A sketch map, that had the final geographical body of the Tokyo Bay and Fuji-No-Yama, showing the terrain, Hassenstein’s notes on the map, transcribed names of places, towns, main roads, rivers, and Mount Fuji, was completed on 17 July 1879.

Examining these sketches reveals the evolving geographic representation of the Tokyo Bay area between condensing the Map of the 13 Provinces and the final map of Tokyo Bay and Fuji-No-Yama. Additionally, Hassenstein had to decide which geographic features – such as towns, rivers, and mountains – would be included in the final map. Notably, he omitted certain details present in the Map of the 13 Provinces that would have been useful for European travellers, such as locations of guest houses or hotels along the route from Tokyo to Mount Fuji. Despite these omissions, compared to maps published by the JRGS, the audience of PGM gained access to more detailed information regarding province names, historical battlefields, vegetation zones of Mount Fuji, and an updated elevation measurement provided by Rein.

References

Conrad, Sebastian (ed.): Johannes Justus Rein. Briefe eines deutschen Geographen aus Japan 1873–1875, Munich 2006.

Dobson, Sebastian, Sven Saaler: Einleitung, in: id. (eds.): Unter den Augen des Preußen-Adlers. Lithographien, Zeichnungen und Photographien der Teilnehmer der Eulenburg-Expedition in Japan, 1860–61, Munich 2011, pp. 17–36.

Goree, Robert: Fun with Moral Mapping in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, in: Kären Wigen, Sugimoto Fumiko, Cary Karacas (eds.): Cartographic Japan. A History in Maps, Chicago 2016, pp. 108–111.

Hassenstein, Bruno to Georg Freiherr von Schleinitz, 30 July 1879a, Gotha Research Library, Perthes Collection, SPA ARCH PGM 150/1, fol. 33.

Id. to Sanda Tadashi, 30 July 1879b, Gotha Research Library, Perthes Collection, SPA ARCH PGM 150/1, fol. 27–29.

Hitoshi, Miyake: Shugendō. Essays on the Structure of Japanese Folk Religion, Ann Arbor 2001.

Lange, Diana, Benjamin van der Linde: Einführung. Farbe trifft Landkarte, in: Kathrin Ezel, Oliver Hahn, Susanne Knödel, Jochen Schlüter (eds.): Ausstellungskatalog Farbe trifft Landkarte, Hamburg 2021, pp. 23–48.

Murray, J.: Map of Part of Nipon Island to Accompany Mr. Adams’ Report on the Central Silk District of Japan, in: Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 41 (1871), Gotha Research Library, Perthes Collection, SPK 30.15.b.04 A (03) Bl. 6 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Nanba, Matsutarō: Nihon No Kochizu [Old Maps in Japan], Osaka 1970.

Petermann, August to Gratama, Koenraad W., 6 October 1873, Gotha Research Library, Perthes Collection, SPA ARCH PGM 150/2, fol. 277a–277b.

Rein, Johannes Justus to Bruno Hassenstein, 25 February 1879a, Gotha Research Library, Perthes Collection, SPA ARCH PGM 150/1, fol. 141–142.

Id.: Der Fuji-no-yama und seine Besteigung, in: Petermanns Geographische Mittheilungen 25 (1879b), pp. 365–376.

Id.: Verzeichnis meiner jap. Karten, in: Tobit Nauheim, Shigekazu Kusune, Winfried Schenk (eds.): Japan 1873–1875. Die Tagebücher des Bonner Geographieprofessors Johannes Justus Rein, vol. 2, Bergisch-Gladbach 2021, pp. 56–262.

Satow, Ernest Mason: Handbook for Travellers in Central & Northern Japan, Yokohama 1881.

Smolarski, René, Petra Weigel: Werkstätten der Kartographie des 19. Jahrhunderts, in: Eyk Henze (ed.): Flachware. Jahrbuch der Leipziger Buchwissenschaft 4, Stuttgart 2018, pp. 107–121.

Wigen, Kären: A Malleable Map. Geographies of Restoration in Central Japan 1600–1912, Berkeley 2010.

---

---