Curio

State Library of New South Wales
A map of the world in Japanese published by Edward Schnell, 1862

A map of the world in Japanese published by Edward Schnell, 1862

Yokohama, Japan

Hand-coloured copper engraving

M4  100/1862/1

Purchased 2015

This map was produced for a Japanese audience but uses traditional Western cartographic conventions and historical content including the routes of significant explorers such as Cook, Vancouver, La Perouse and Flinders.

This is one of the first Japanese maps to be based on the Mercator projection. The first Mercator based map, a new world map on Dutch sources, also held by the Library, was produced only a few years earlier by Seiyo Sato in 1857.


Edward Schnell was a Prussian who arrived in Japan with his brother Henry sometime in the early 1860s with the intention of selling arms and developing mines. During his time in Japan, Edward is said to have associated with Aidzu samurai and was given the Japanese name Buhei Hiramatsu. 

Source: Kawaguchi, Hirohisa 'Henry Schnell and the Japanese Immigration to United States', 1991.