Historical nautical charts published by the Japanese Navy during the Meiji era and owned by domestic and overseas libraries and museums.

Abstract

We surveyed the Japanese nautical charts published in the Meiji era in the collections of domestic and overseas libraries and museums in 2019. As a result, we found the following new facts.The Tokyo National Museum has in its holdings the charts exhibited at the first and third National Industrial Exhibitions held in 1877 and 1890. The Leiden University Libraries in Netherlands own two volumes of the Dai-Nippon Kaigan Jissokuzu, the atlas of Japanese nautical charts that the Japanese Hydrographic Office compiled based on its own hydrographic surveys in its founding period.While it is known that the Kyoto University Museum owns many charts that were published in the Meiji era and stamped with “Donated by the Navy”, some documents of the National Archives revealed that these charts were donated by the Japanese Imperial Navy in 1911, upon request from the Kyoto Imperial University.