Japanese Map of the World in Two Hemispheres, 1848

Two great circles fill the sheet, each packed with coastlines, latitude lines and columns of Japanese characters. The map was printed from woodblocks in 1848 and then colored by hand, which explains the flat blue washing over North and South America, the pink spreading across Asia and Europe, and the reddish brown of Australia. Four smaller circles are tucked into the corners like footnotes, showing the polar regions and clusters of islands too small to read at full scale. Along the top left sits a color key, a practical touch that reminds you this was made to be used, not admired.

The detail worth catching is in the titles. The hemisphere holding the Americas is labeled the Eastern Hemisphere, and the one holding Europe, Africa and Asia is called the Western. That is not a mistake. Seen from Japan, America really does lie east across the Pacific and Europe lies far to the west. Shincho Kurihara made this five years before Commodore Perry's ships arrived, during the long stretch when Japan kept foreign contact to a trickle. Much of the geography here came secondhand, filtered through Dutch traders at Nagasaki and Chinese sources, then redrawn for Japanese readers hungry to know what lay beyond their shores. As a piece of printing it is straightforward work, but it captures a country on the edge of opening up, mapping a world it had not yet been allowed to visit.