Karen Wigen probes regional cartography, choerography, and statecraft to redefine restoration (ishin) in modern Japanese history. As developed here, that term designates not the quick coup d'etat of 1868 but a three-centuries-long project of rehabilitating an ancient map for modern purposes. Drawing on a wide range of geographical documents from Shinano (present-day Nagano Prefecture), Wigen argues that both the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1600-1868) and the reformers of the Meiji era (1868-1912) recruited the classical map to serve the cause of administrative reform. Nor were...
Karen Wigen probes regional cartography, choerography, and statecraft to redefine restoration (ishin) in modern Japanese history. As developed ...