Pair of Folding Screens with Maps of Japan and the World

ca. 1690

These folding screens painted in bright colours on an indigo background form maps more than 2.5 metres long. They are indicative of the global circulation of knowledge during the pre-modern era and the fact that Japan had been included in the circuit following the Portuguese and Spanish expansion into Asia and the missionary expeditions of the Jesuits. One screen shows a planisphere, the other the Japanese archipelago. The maps injected innovation into Japanese mapmaking with their adoption of a Western vision of the world. In so doing, they asked the universal question of the place of the individual in a world that was suddenly being opened to new horizons.