Curator’s Picks: Treasure-hunting in a Ming World Map
The National Library’s latest exhibition, Mapping the World: Perspectives from Asian Cartography, features over 60 treasures from Asian mapping traditions, many of them on display in Singapore for the very first time. Join curator Chung Sang Hong as he shares his rewarding experiences with two of these stunning maps.
One of the greatest rewards of exhibition curation lies in discovering new findings about the topics or artefacts on display. It is akin to stumbling upon a site with buried treasure, digging to uncover it and finally presenting select gems to the public. In the process of curating the National Library’s latest exhibition, Mapping the World: Perspectives from Asian Cartography, I was blessed with just such an experience as the curatorial team undertook research on a key highlight of the exhibition, Konyo bankoku zenzu, a copy of the Japanese version of Matteo Ricci’s famous world map published in China, Kunyu wanguo quantu (坤舆万国全图 or “Map of the Myriad Countries of the World”).
Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) is renowned for introducing Western knowledge in astronomy, mathematics and cartography to late Ming China. Arriving in China in 1583, he translated and published Renaissance-period European world maps in Chinese. Among the maps Ricci made, Kunyu wanguo quantu (henceforth Kunyu), which was published in Beijing in 1602, was the most widely circulated. While largely based on the maps of Plancius, Mercator and Ortelius, the world map also incorporated Chinese sources for descriptions of China and other regions in the map, including toponyms from the maps drawn during Admiral Zheng He’s naval expeditions in the early Ming period (1405–1433)¹. Kunyu was a collaboration between Ricci and his Chinese associate Li Zhizao (李之藻, 1565–1630), a government official with a keen interest in geography, who provided the Chinese inputs and initiated the printing of the map.
Kunyu is not too different from the world map we are familiar with today. It features fairly accurate contours of the continents – even though the Southern Hemisphere was not entirely mapped out yet; detailed notations for various regions and countries; and incorporated western astronomical knowledge. It was the first map that introduced European world mapping practices to East Asia. It was said that the map caused quite a stir when it was first published – everywhere Ricci went, Chinese officials requested for stone etchings or woodblock copies so that they could run prints of the map as gifts. Even Ming Emperor Wanli (r. 1572–1620) commanded multiple copies of the map to be made.²
Before long, copies of Kunyu were disseminated to Korea and Japan. The map also made waves in Japanese intellectual circles, and had a great impact on the history of world mapping in Japan.³ The Japanese adapted the map and retained its title, which is transliterated as Konyo bankoku zenzu (henceforth Konyo). A few extant copies of Konyo can be found in Japan, and we are privileged to display a copy of this map on loan from the Yokohama City University Library and Information Center.
Same same but different
A dearth of published sources or academic articles in English on the Konyo map poses a challenge to curation. We decided to embark on a comparison between Konyo and its Chinese original, Kunyu, to discover their similarities and differences. Extending the treasure-hunting metaphor mentioned in the beginning of this post, we imagined the two maps as “treasure maps” where “gems” had been hidden and waiting to be decoded – fascinating findings that would reward further explorations.
For a start, the Japanese Konyo map is a much simplified, stylised version of the Chinese Kunyu map – while the former is a richly coloured and exquisite manuscript, the latter is a monochromatic woodblock print in black ink, devoid of embellishment. Much of the information in Kunyu was omitted in Konyo, such as the extensive explanatory notes and annotations of certain places, as well as the insets of seasonal and astronomical charts.
I was also intrigued by a few other discrepancies. Curiously, while China is named “The Great Unified Ming” (大明一统, Daming yitong) in Kunyu, it is not labelled at all in Konyo. Was it because the Ming dynasty had ended by the time this map was created in Japan? Why was the subsequent Qing Empire not reflected in the map then? As all the other countries on the map are labelled, this omission seems glaring and deliberate.
I hazard a guess based on one clue – the depiction of Taiwan on both maps. In Kunyu, Taiwan is labelled Daliuqiu (大琉球), while in Konyo, the island is named Dongning (东宁) with its adjacent offshore island of Penghu (澎湖) marked (which is not depicted in Kunyu). Dongning clearly refers to the Kingdom of Tungning, a maritime state that ruled part of Taiwan and Penghu islands from 1661 to 1683. Its allegiance was to the Southern Ming, a group of remnant states headed by imperial members of the Ming dynasty in southern China after the Manchus conquered Beijing in 1644 and established the Qing dynasty. If the toponym could date the map (which is currently unknown), then Konyo was possibly produced during the Tungning kingdom’s reign. By this time, the Ming dynasty had collapsed even though its remnant forces continued to exist. Perhaps, the Japanese mapmaker of Konyo couldn’t quite decide what to call China and thus left it unnamed?
Interestingly, information of religious nature in Kunyu was also left out in Konyo, such as the significance of the Holy Land, the Pope in Rome and the Christendom in Europe. Ricci would have intentionally included these annotations as part of his missionary work in China. However, as Christianity was banned in Japan from the turn of the 17th century to the 1850s, it is understandable why such information was removed from Konyo.
Finding Singapore
The Singaporean in me was interested to find out how Southeast Asia had been depicted on both maps. Was Singapore on the map? To my amazement, on Konyo, a tiny island – coloured bright red and unlabelled – is depicted at the tip of the Malay Peninsula. Literally a “little red dot”! However, in the same region on Kunyu, three tiny islands are found. It is tempting to think that the tiny crimson island on Konyo is indeed Singapore, but unfortunately this cannot be verified. Nevertheless, one can conclude that both maps reveal the cartographers’ awareness of the islands, be they present-day Singapore, Batam or Bintan. The deliberate colouring and delineation of the island on Konyo hints at more specific knowledge of the region’s geography.
Comparing both maps, the shape of Malay Peninsula on the maps is also noteworthy – while on Kunyu it is an unshapely “lump”; on Konyo, it has evolved into a tapering, elegant strip, reasonably resembling the Peninsula’s shape as we know it today. If the two maps are indeed created 60 to 80 years apart, Konyo was likely to have been “updated”, incorporating knowledge from later maps. Another 17th century map, The Selden Map of China, which was believed to have been made between 1606 and 1624, also features a tapering Malay Peninsula, likely due to references from other European maps circulating at the time. Konyo might have also benefitted from these maps, leading to more accurate depictions than its Chinese predecessor. While my attempt at finding Singapore remained inconclusive, clearly identified on both maps in Malay Peninsula are the Srivijaya (三佛齐) and Martaban (马大邦) kingdoms, Melaka (满剌加) and even Johor (药儿)⁴.
Asian maps such as the kunyu and konyo tell us so much of the past and how civilisations envisaged the world they inhabited. Each map is like a snapshot of the society in which it was created, revealing its geographical and cosmological understandings, as well as its cultural or political influences. There are many more treasures to see at Mapping the World, which features over 60 Asian cartographic artefacts from international collections. Happening now till 8 May 2022, the exhibition is open daily from 10 am to 9 pm (except public holidays) at the National Library building, Level 10, Gallery. Click here to find out more about our exhibition programmes.
The author acknowledges Edelweiss Ng for her research support and Mok Ly Yng for his valuable inputs.
Chung Sang Hong is the Senior Head of Exhibitions at National Library Board. He has been curating exhibitions at the National Library Board since 2015. He enjoys telling stories about Singapore’s lesser-known histories as well as the greater Asian histories, with a particular interest in human stories.
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[1] Michela Fontana, Matteo Ricci: A Jesuit in the Ming Court (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011), 211.
[2] Richard J. Smith, Chinese Maps: Images of “All Under Heaven” (Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 45.
[3] Shintaro Ayusawa, “The Types of World Map Made in Japan’s Age of National Isolation,” Imago Mundi, 10 (1953): 123–127.
[4] 陈佳荣，谢方，陆峻岭, (1986). 古代南海地名汇释，北京：中华书局，pp. 563, 621.
