Rare Metellus Japan, in original color

Metellus/Andreas, 1596 :
Iaponia Regnum. 15 x 21 cm. Excellent. Rare original color. $5500.

The first derivative of Ortelius' rendering of the Teixeira prototype for Japan, a rare map that is extremely rare in original color.

The landmark Ortelius prototype was derived from the Portuguese Jesuit Luis Teixiera, and remained the finest prototype map of Japan available to subsequent cartographers through the early nineteenth century. It was the first map to correctly locate Japan between 30 and 40 degrees north latitude, and in its basic accuracy it was nothing short of revolutionary.

Teixieras map is also interesting in that it was born of two worlds. Information for its construction was derived both from Jesuit sources and from the native Gyogi maps (Gyogi, in Japanese tradition, was their first cartographer).

The kingdom which Columbus, Magellan, and so many others had sought remained, for much of the sixteenth century, shrouded in the myths born of Marco Polos Travels. He had not been to Japan, but had heard much about it from mainland Asian informants. What he related to Europe of Japan (Cipangri) upon his return from the East in 1292 fueled two and a half centuries of dreaming and yearning to reach its shores. Marco Polo described Japan as "...a very big island....some 1,500 miles from the mainland..." As for people, they are "...fair-complexioned, good-looking, and well-mannered. They are idolators, wholly independent and exercising no authority over any nation but themselves." But it was principally his report of Japan's wealth that so obsessed Europe:"They have gold in great abundance, because it is found there in measureless quantities. And I assure you that no one exports it from the island, because no trader, nor indeed anyone else, goes there from the mainland. That is how they come to possess so much of it-so much indeed that I can report to you in sober truth a veritable marvel concerning a certain palace of the ruler of the island. You may take it for a fact that he has a very large palace entirely roofed with fine gold. Just as we roof our houses or churches with lead, so this palace is roofed with fine gold. And the value of it is almost beyond computation. Moreover all the chambers, of which there are many, are likewise paved with fine gold to a depth of more than two fingers' breadth. And the halls and the windows and every other part of the palace are likewise adorned with gold. All in all I can tell you the palace is of such incalculable richness that any attempt to estimate its value would pass beyond the bounds of the marvellous." In comtrast to Polos secondhand romanticism, Ortelius accompanied Teixieras map with text by Maffei.

Manuscript maps which survive in Florence and Madrid bear close generic resemblance to Teixiera"s; he probably knew these, others similar, or their Gyogi prototypes. It was probably from these manuscript maps that Teixiera was able to delineate and label the 62 kuni (political units) into which Japan was then divided.

In 1595, when Ortelius introduced the map that was in turn copied by Metellus, Japan was thirteen years into the Hideyoshi regime. The Jesuits had already been outlawed in Japan for eight years, and official tolerance for European presence there would soon cease. Before the Theatrum finished publication, Japan had isolated herself. The West learned little more of her secrets until Perry pried the island-nation open in the mid-nineteenth century.