Inó Tadataka, les premiers pas de la géographie moderne au Japon

Abstract

While all Japanese know the name Inô Tadataka, a self-taught scholar of the late-Edo period and amateur surveyor, he is practically unknown in the other countries. His maps are graphically remarkable and constitute an unquestionable advance in Japanese cartography in the sense that it was the first time Japan had been accurately depicted and precisely situated on a world scale, even if these maps did not provide any technical innovations. Inô the individual is interesting for his serious-mindness, perseverance and the enormous task that he achieved during the last twelve years of his life by unrelentingly traveling all over the country to measure the coasts and to draw up an accurate map, a long, laborious and meticulous task of no concern with the political changes of the times. However, this remarkable work would serve no purpose as the bakufu would keep these maps secret for a long time ; indeed by the irony of fate, they would be printed in Europe long before being distributed in Japan. They would be used by Europeans, precisely what the bakufu wished to avoid. The bakufu feared the use of the maps for hostile purposes at its expense, without seeing the advantage they could have provided. This is an example of the Edo governement's lack of judgement and its policy of closing the outside world.