Introduction

This is the beginning of an encomiastic review of a 1935 historical atlas in a Japanese newspaper. The argument relies on the contrast between maps produced by professional cartographers and those made for the use of historians. But these apparent opposites also share structural similarities that rely on shared assumptions. The first is the assumption of a stable object of study such as the history of Japan. Since the 1960s, this has been challenged both by insights into the social constructedness of history, and, in the case of Japan, by unpacking the variability of the term ‘Japan’ itself. The second assumption is that of the constancy of time and space as epistemological categories whose reality is to be captured by maps. However, it is now increasingly clear that history is constituted by overlapping ‘heterochronicities’, or ‘multiple temporalities’. This renders problematic attempts at mapping a universal time frame.

The case of East Asia is especially poignant, since it developed autonomous temporal and spatial categories that, in their turn, evolved over time. For example, when Jesuit scholars brought back news of Chinese chronology to Europe in the seventeenth century, European historiography had to reconsider its much shorter Bible-based chronology.