A late-Edo period wide area map that shows the old provinces of Hitachi, Shimoksuke, Kozuke, Kai, Shinano, Totomi and all the provinces surrounding Tokyo. This roughly translates in today's geography to include the area in the west from Hamamatsu east and north from Tokyo to about Iwaki on the Pacific coast. Wide area maps were published in Japan only toward the end of the shogunate's power, which ended in 1868. This is a beautiful woodblock map printed using at least five separate blocks for black, yellow, red, blue and green. Some areas of blue are done in a lovely gradient from light to dark indicating the sea depth. The city of Tokyo is shown as a large red area. Mt. Fuji is well depicted. This large paper map folds into original Japanese-style paper boards with printed paper label on top. A very fine and uncommon map of Japan based on the old Provinces.

References:

Condition: B

Excellent impression with full margins. Some worm tracks closed on verso with archival tissue.