“Nihon Sangaku Shi Taiyo” Translated from “Skizze der Orographie von Japan” (E. Naumann, 1893c)

Abstract

Edmund Naumann (1854–1927) came from Germany and stayed in Japan for ten years from 1875. He performed a lot of pioneering research on the geology and geography of Japan, which were written mostly in German and recently translated into Japanese by N. Yamashita (1996). However, a paper titled “Skizze der Orographie von Japan” published in 1893 on “Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen” as the third article of Naumann's “Neue Beiträge zur Geologie und Geographie Japans” has not yet been translated. The paper, which we have now translated into Japanese as “Nihon Sangaku Shi Taiyo”, consists of two parts. The first part deals with the relationship between the topography of mountainous lands and geology, in terms of volcanoes, old mountainlands, granitic mountains, coastlines, depressions, longitudinal and transverse valleys, watersheds, etc. The second part deals with the topographic character of each geotectonic zone of Japan: the northern and the southern wings of the Japan Arc and the Fossa Magna intervening between both wings. One figure and one table are included in this paper. Fig. 1 is an altitude layer map of the main three islands of Japan with a scale of 1:2,600,000, the earliest one drawn with contour lines. Table 1 is a list of the main mountaintops of Japan (eighty-seven mountains), including location, altitude, and geologic nature. Furthermore, a supplementary figure, which shows the distribution of the main mountaintops, watersheds, and geotectonic divisions of Japan, was made by the translators.