L'EMPIRE DU JAPON, TIRE DES CARTES DES JAPONNOIS (JAPAN).

A beautiful old colored map, which was published by Henri Chatelain in 1719 for his 'Atlas Historique'. Published from 1705 to 1720, the 'Atlas Historique' was intended for the general public and was one of the most widely distributed atlases of the early 18th century.
In order to produce his atlas, Chatelain was compelled to draw upon the work of his contemporaries. This map was actually a copy of Adrien Reland’s earlier rendering of Japan. Reland’s map was a marked improvement over earlier European maps of Japan in some respects. For instance, it provided an improved treatment of Kyushu and fully delineated the sixty six provinces of Japan using Sino-Japanese characters.
It also included a detailed inset of Nagasaki, which displayed the Dejima, an artificial lake which housed the Dutch trading station of the VOC.

Despite these advancements, this map also includes some inaccuracies. Reland originally intended to create a travel map, and formatting constraints meant that he had to represent Honshu in a truncated form. In addition, Chatelain made some errors when translating Reland’s map from Dutch into French, leaving some of the Japanese provinces with incorrect names.

Zacharie Chatelain (d.1723) was the father of Henri Abraham (1684-1743) and Zacharie Junior (1690-1754).
They worked as a partnership publishing the Atlas Historique, Ou Nouvelle Introduction A L’Histoire … under several different Chatelain imprints, depending on the Chatelain family partnerships at the time of publication.
The atlas was published in seven volumes between 1705 and 1720, with a second edition appearing in 1732. The maps were accompanied by information pertaining to cosmography, geography, history, chronology, genealogy, topography, heraldry, and costume of the world.

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