#O11
1854
41,5x62cm. Double sheet. Kawaraban, i.e. woodblock printed ephemera on paper in black ink. Near fine condition. Text in Japanese.
Large-format kawaraban map titled Kairiku Okatame (海陸御固), illustrating the coastal defences of Edo Bay, Izu, and Shimoda at the height of the Black Ships crisis. The sheet records the strategic landscape in early Kaei 7 (1854), when both Commodore Perry’s American squadron and Count Putyatin’s Russian fleet appeared in Japanese waters. The map details batteries, guard posts, villages, and road networks, reflecting the rapid militarisation of the coastline as the shogunate prepared for renewed foreign contact.
This edition belongs to the defensive-map subgenre of kawaraban, produced in response to public anxiety and the shogunate’s urgent need to communicate its defensive measures. The depiction of non-steam Russian vessels, together with the absence of post-1854 treaty-port references, firmly situates this printing before the Shimoda agreements. The sheet’s dense iconography offers a rare visual record of the coastal fortification programme along the approaches to Edo.
Kawaraban maps of this type are now uncommon, as they were ephemeral prints circulated to inform townspeople of contemporary events. Their survival provides important documentary evidence of how the Japanese public first encountered the geopolitical pressures of the late Tokugawa period. This example, centred on Edo–Izu–Shimoda defensive lines, is an especially valuable witness to the moment in which Japan’s isolation policy was collapsing and coastal security became a national priority.
Anna Wada, “About Kawaraban” // Perry in Japan[:] A Visual History. 2011
