By RIKA YUMINAGA/ Staff Writer
February 12, 2021 at 07:00 JST
The reproduction of a map of Nagasaki’s landscape during the late Edo Period is shown in Nagasaki in December. (Rika Yuminaga)
NAGASAKI--The sprawling map that Hidetoshi Miyawaki stumbled upon at a Nagasaki University library offered clues to this port city’s feudal past, but unfortunately it was a tattered mess.
The 3.5-by-4.5 meter map, believed to be from the 1850s, had degraded so badly over the years that sections were torn and paint was peeling off in places.
Hoping to salvage the artifact, the university turned to Fuji Xerox Nagasaki to produce a clear copy. The company spent 18 months working to replicate the map using its aged document re-creation technology.
The copy, completed in June last year and unveiled in December, offers a penetrating look into Nagasaki’s heyday as a trading hub during the late Edo Period (1603-1867).
“I expect the map will help people imagine what Nagasaki was like back then and find differences with the city’s current landscape,” said Miyawaki, a chief at the university’s Academic Information Department.
Miyawaki found the original map gathering dust in the stack room of the Nagasaki University Economics Library in May 2017.
The copy will go on public display at the library after it reopens around summer following refurbishment work.
The map shows the land sizes by area, a stone bridge, a well and other features of the time. Eighty districts in central Nagasaki are presented in four hues.
The most significant finding is that the map specifies the number of the “kasho” unit of about 200 square meters used to distribute profits from foreign trade to local merchants.
Nagasaki thrived on trade at the time, and merchants received bonuses, called “kasho-gane” and “kamado-gane,” based on the kasho unit. The map might have been drawn up for distributing bonuses.
“The reproduction of the map is now open for research, too,” said Shigeta Minamimori, an associate professor of Japanese economic history at the university, who serves as the library’s director. “We will further study Nagasaki’s unique kasho-gane and kamado-gane.”
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