Maps and metaphors of the "small eastern sea" in Tokugawa Japan (1603-1868)

This article examines the ways in which oceans were depicted in Japanese ge ographical writings and maps from the Tokugawa period. It uses these texts to understand how early modern Japanese visions of the Pacific and of marit ime Asian waters constructed epistemological frameworks through which the J apanese saw their place in an increasingly complex web of regional and glob al connections. In the absence of actual adventure on the "high seas," Japa nese writers, artists, and mapmakers used the inventive power of the imagin ation to fill in the cognitive blank of ocean space. I argue that the defin ition of early modern oceanic space was profoundly ambiguous, a legacy that , it can be argued, left its mark on Japan's modern relationship with the A sian Pacific region.