Carte des découvertes au Nord du Japon

Title

Carte des découvertes au Nord du Japon

Description

Detailed map of his voyage of discovery 1787 at the northern part of Japan with the La Perouse and the Tsugaru Strait north and south of Hokkaido.

ca. 1797

Artist

Pérouse, la (1741-1788)

Jean-François de Galaup de La Pérouse (1741 1788) was a French Naval officer and explorer whose expedition vanished in Oceania. La Pérouse crossed the Pacific Ocean in 100 days, arriving at Macau, where he sold the furs acquired in Alaska, dividing the profits among his men. Lapérouse sailed all the way south to the Spanish Las Californias in 1786. He stopped at the Presidio of San Francisco long enough to create an outline map of the Bay Area, Plan du Port du St. Francois, which was reproduced as Map 33 in L. Aubert's 1797 Atlas du Voyage de la Perouse. Laterhe arrived in Monterey Bay and at the Presidio of Monterey. In 1787 after a visit to Manila, he set out for the northeast Asian coasts. He saw the island of Quelpart, present-day Cheju in South Korea, which had been visited by Europeans only once before when a group of Dutchmen shipwrecked there in 1635. He visited the Asian mainland coasts of Korea.

Historical Description

In the 16th century, Portuguese traders and Jesuit missionaries first reached Japan and initiated direct commercial and cultural exchanges between Japan and the West. Oda Nobunaga used European technology and firearms to conquer many other daimyos. His power consolidation began in the so-called Azuchi Momoyama period. After Nobunaga's death in 1582, his successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi unified the nation in the early 1590s and launched two unsuccessful invasions of Korea in 1592 and 1597. He was appointed Shogun by Emperor Go-Yōzei in 1603 and founded the Tokugawa Shogunate in Edo (modern Tokyo). The shogunate enacted measures such as the Buk-Shohatto code of conduct to control the autonomous daimyōs and in 1639 the isolationist sakoku ("closed country") policy, which spanned two and a half centuries of weak political unity known as the Edo period (1603-1868) . During the isolation of Japan in the Edo period, entry and exit for Japanese and foreigners were prohibited. With the exception of limited exchanges with China and the Netherlands, who were the only Europeans allowed to stay in Japan on the artificial island of Dejima off Nagasaki in 1639, there was hardly any contact with other states. The Tokugawa family retained control of the other daimyo for over 250 years. This period was marked by great prosperity for the Japanese people. The population grew steadily. Today's Tokyo grew into the largest metropolitan area in the world during this time. The economic growth of modern Japan began during this period, leading to road and water transport routes, as well as financial instruments such as futures, banks, and insurance for the Osaka rice brokers. The study of western sciences (Rangaku) continued through contact with the Dutch enclave in Nagasaki. The Edo period led to Kokugaku ("National Studies"), the study of Japan by the Japanese. In 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry and the "Black Ships" of the United States Navy forced the opening of Japan to the outside world with the Kanagawa Convention. Later similar treaties with other Western countries brought economic and political crises with them. The cabinet took over Western political, judicial and military institutions, organized the privy council, introduced the Meiji constitution and assembled the Reichstag.