Even though I’ve basically lived in the same place for more than 20 years, it’s still easy to get turned around, misdirected, and just generally confused. As a native, it’s kind of embarrassing.

So you can imagine that finding my way around in Japan is ten times as bad. But during the month we spent in Japan earlier this year, I learned a lot about navigating Japan and finding my way around.

Let’s assume that you’re in Japan and that you have phone service. You may think that because you have a phone with an internet connection, you’re invincible. GPS will deliver you to your destination without any problems.

We used Google Maps a lot (a lot) in Japan, but it wasn’t a cure-all. Even with a map of the world in your hands, there are still a few problems.

Japanese Addresses Are Different

A lot of people don’t realize this, but addresses work diffrently in countries around the world. Because of that, the format of Japanese addresses doesn’t always make sense to foreigners.

Fortunately, we wrote about how the Japanese address system works a few years back; but for those who missed it, here’s a quick recap:

You know streets? Those things that cars drive down and have names? You can basically forget about them in Japan.

Streets pretty critical in the American address system (they’re sometimes even called “street addresses”), but the Japanese system instead relies on areas.

Japanese addresses break down in this order:

1. Prefecture
2. Municipality
3. Location within municipality
4. District
5. Block
6. House number

Note that a street name isn’t anywhere in that list. That can be kind of a culture shock to people used to something different.

Even once you understand the Japanese address system, there are other oddities and obstacles to getting around.

Unreliable Maps

You might want to know the phone number to the place you’re going to, since a lot of Japanese GPS systems accept phone numbers in addition to addresses, and a phone number can be much easier to remember.

Don’t count on always being able to rely on your GPS, either. While some (like Google Maps) are pretty reliable, others are really undependable.

Apple Maps has been even worse in Japan than the rest of the world (although it’s been getting better), and if you’re old-fashioned and have a dedicated GPS (instead of a phone), you can forget about it.

Most dedicated GPS from the US and other countries just don’t have Japanese map information built in. You might be able to download the maps you need, but it’s probably not built-in.

Helpful Tools

It might sound like I’m trying to make it sound like it’s hard to get around in Japan, but it’s really not! Public transportation is obviously world-class in much of the country, and people are almost always friendly and willing to help you out.

Plus, there are lots of guides out there (like this one from Surviving in Japan) made specifically for foreigners visiting Japan.

And if you’re looking for a maps app to help you out, there are more and more Japanese-made apps popping up by the day (thanks in part to the failure of Apple Maps).

With those tools, your own smarts and intuition, and some hard work, it can be simple to get wherever you want to go in Japan.

Now where the hell was I going again?

Popularly labeled as Japan’s “invisible race”, the Burakumin is Japan’s 1.5~2% or 2 to 3 million people strong. The term invisible race means just that, the general Japanese population itself is unaware of their existence (the stigma behind the name is so bad, individuals of Burakumin origin do what they can to hide their ancestry) or choose not to address it. Although ethnically Japanese, the label that beset the people has been a product of religious and social beliefs that stems back to the beginnings of the Tokugawa era (1603). Throughout most of the group’s existence, they have suffered severe discrimination and prejudice by the majority of society. Although, today it seems that this discrimination has somewhat subsided partly due to lack of education on the matter. The group’s name often conjures up associations with being delinquents, uneducated, crime-ridden, violent, and ghetto. You could say the Burakumin to the Japanese is the rough equivalent to the popular generalized social views of the African-American to the Americans.

If these people are ethnically Japanese, then what makes them different from the rest?

Origins of the Eta Class

Mentioned earlier in the article, the group was a product of religious and social beliefs at the start of the Tokugawa era in 1603. To put it more specifically, Shintoism and the concept of kegare with a side of Buddhism. Death and anything associated to it is considered is considered “unclean.” Individuals that are in contact with this state of life are considered defiled, polluted, and tainted. Previously labeled as the more derogatory term, Eta (filthy mass), these individuals worked in necessary and instrumental occupations, such as leather workers, executioners, undertakers, butchers, sewage removal, etc. I think you got the point. They were the bottom of the barrel in an ancient social caste system; simply put, they were outcasts. As per the Tokugawa’s feudalistic social structure, individual status and occupation were assigned and permanently unchangeable. For those who are familiar with Indian culture, they are sort of the equivalent to the untouchables.

Eventually, those that held tainted and death occupations, started forming their own small villages or hamlets, known in Japanese as buraku 部落 (ぶらく). The min 民 (たみ) stands for people or nation. Thus the etymology of the word, Burakumin, people of the hamlets.

Although there has been no physical distinction between a Burakumin and a non-Burakumin in today’s age, during the Tokugawa regime it was easier to distinguish the group. Aside from living in known hamlets, each individual was required to wear designated clothing, slippers, and hairstyles. In addition, they were banned from having rice field rights and had curfews they had to abide.

The Burakumin were officially proclaimed emancipated by the government following four years after the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Unfortunately, the group’s assimilation into the new Modern Japan hasn’t seen immediate success and still somewhat lingers to this day.

Though the discriminatory situation has been getting better, there are a few practices that still exists. For example, a few major and minor Japanese firms employ background checks (via koseki) on potentials and the hired suspected of Burakumin origin,  to determine if any ancestry exists, either to exclude the individual from being hired or use as leverage to under compensate or restrict their career path. Some families also employ background checks to ensure that anyone marrying into the family isn’t of origin.

Education-Wise, How Is The Issue Being Addressed Today?

To put it simply, the issue isn’t being openly addressed in Japan’s compulsory education system. There exists two popular approaches among Burakumin organizations, scholars, and politicians: be overt or be silent. Japan’s Ministry of Education and a few of the major Burakumin organizations embrace the “if the issues are never discussed, then it never happened” approach.  The idea behind this approach is that awareness of discrimination and prejudice may contribute physical and psychological separation of those with Burakumin origin and those who are not. In other words, ignorance is bliss. And any mention of the issues would be considered an act of prejudice against the group. This is often why the common reaction among many young Japanese are of astonishment when they hear discriminatory issues of the Burakumin still exists. It is also a stark contrast to the approach many U.S. minority civil groups take when publicly dealing with social issues.

A recent example of keeping the Burakumin issue silent occurred in 2009, when Google released a version of Google Earth with an ancient Japan overlay, which detailed locations of Burakumin hamlets and districts. A huge outcry from civil groups and the Ministry of Education followed, which eventually led to Google giving into their demands by removing the feature.

I can see the reasons instituting ignorance, but is it the best approach? As someone who was raised in a Western society, especially the U.S., it is somewhat odd that an answer to discrimination is ignorance. But perhaps this is due to cultural differences. There’s a lot more to this issue than what is covered in the scope of this article.

If this has sparked any interest, or if you are even considering making Japan your home someday, then I would like to suggest doing some research on the Burakumin and the other minority groups via journal article databases or a simple Google search. It’s a large can of worms, but it does give some insight on how the Japanese approach and deal with issues and problems.

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All that being said, that’s only “Western” people we’re talking about. Japan was pretty xenophobic until the 1800′s, and they didn’t “get out” much. You could say that about all the Asian countries hanging about back then. It wasn’t until the 1600′s that Japan “saw the world for the first time” (in map form)… and boy did it look beautiful.

Matteo Ricci: Missionary and Map Maker

Forgive me for taking us to China for a bit. This isn’t a blog about China, but this is where the story starts.

Matteo Ricci (pictured above) was born in Italy in 1552. He wanted to become a missionary in India, but instead was dispatched to China where he arrived in 1582. He was in a Portuguese trading post (Macau), where none of the other Missionaries (or anyone, really) had to learn any Chinese. Because he was forward thinking, or bored, or something inbetween, he became one of the first Westerners to be able to read Chinese script. He and another guy, Ruggieri (one of the only other Missionaries who studied Chinese) then went around mainland China to do their missionary duties.

Apparently, he was already pretty skilled at map making, and was invited to stay in Zhaoqing (an area of China), where in 1584 he Ricci composed the first European-style map in Chinese. The original map does not survive, but there are many copies, some of which eventually made it to Japan (and are there to this day).

The Kunyu Wanguo Quantu

Click the map for a bigger version, or click here for huge version

The Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (坤輿萬國全圖), which means “A Map of the Myriad Countries of the World” was originally created in 1584 (by Ricci, of course), and had other editions created after. The above image is the third revision (created in 1602). This map is very large (1.5m by 3.66m), and of course shows China/Asia as the center of the world (European maps of the time normally showed Europe as being in the center). Overall, this map was pretty good, I’d say.

It made its way to Japan eventually, though it never really took hold like it did in China (at least not right away). Japan had its own World maps, though, and a lot of the information was said to have come from Ricci’s maps.

The First Japanese Map Of The World

Although the Kunyu Wnguo Quantu was making its rounds, it was largely a Chinese thing, and didn’t become incredibly popular until it was copied later on by Nagakubo (keep reading). One of the first Japanese world maps in Japan was actually a Buddhist map, which means all kinds of interesting things. Before we look at that, though, let’s take a look at Japanese Buddhist “World” Maps before they started incorporating the other countries of the world. These maps, called nansenbusho, consisted of only three countries: China, India, and Japan.

I wouldn’t say this map would be particularly useful for someone trying to find any of these countries, but China is in the Northeastern section, India makes up the inverted triangle shape at the bottom, and Japan is an island off to the East. These maps centered on the Buddhist world, and have a lot of Buddhist landmarks. The whirlpool in the middle, for example, is the center of the universe, which is a lake where Queen Maya gave birth to the Buddha.

This new map, printed in 1710 (considerably after Ricci’s map) is the first nansenbushu that contained the rest of the world. It’s thought that Ricci’s map had made some circulation by this time, and the author of this map heard about the rest of the world enough to make some fun guesses. Then again, the map with only India, China, and Japan wasn’t particularly accurate from a cartographic standpoint, so I guess I shouldn’t be expecting that much.

Yes, this is a map of the world – See a zoomable version of this map here

This new map, called “Nansenbushu bankoku Shoka no zu” is thought to be the first Japanese map to depict the rest of the world (outside of the three main Buddhist Countries at the time). Of course, you have to remember this is a Buddhist map, meaning things are mapped by religious significance (rather than actual accuracy), meaning India and China get a big portion of the map… most of it, in fact.

You can see India because of the peninsula at the bottom. China and Japan get a pretty big piece of the pie as well. In fact, this map is mostly made up of the three countries, so where is the rest of the world?

Europe is in the top left corner – as you can see, mostly just place names are written in – there’s nothing there of any (religious) importance, it’s just kind of up there, consisting of a bunch of islands. Countries like England, Holland, Hungary, Italy, France, and others are represented.

Supposedly Africa, this small island off to the West is labeled as the “Kingdom of Western Women.” Awesome.

In the top right, it also seems as though they have Alaska and the Aelutian land bridge, which means even the Americas got some map cred. Obviously this is the most accurate part of the map – Alaska is still just a blank sheet of ice with mountains (just kidding people from Alaska).

I think this particular map is pretty awesome – it shows how the importance of certain things really can dictate how a map is drawn out. Obviously a big part is a lack of knowledge at the time of how other countries are laid out, but you can definitely see what’s important on this map (Buddhism) and what’s not (everything else). The scale of this map really wasn’t to scale in terms of land mass. Instead, it was to scale in terms of religious importance. I think India wins in this one. That’s where Buddha was born, after all.

Of course, maps like this couldn’t go on forever… not with Ricci’s maps making its rounds since the early 1600s. Eventually, someone made a world map for Japan that gained a lot of traction.

Nagakubo Sekisui’s Revised World Map

I think it’s fairly reasonable to assume that the copies of Ricci’s maps (which did make it to Japan) were some of the first good world maps that Japan had ever seen. Considering how closed off Japan was to the rest of the world at the time, a map of the world in a language that some Japanese people could read (at least better than English, or some other European language) must have been really interesting. Still, Ricci’s maps weren’t necessarily widely distributed, meaning the world was probably a mystery to a lot of people (though by this time people knew that other countries besides India, China, and Japan existed, of course).

Then along came Nagakubo Sekisui. He took Ricci’s map and copied it in woodblock print form. He didn’t just copy maps for a living (we’ll cover that in a sec), but I’d say he did a good job on this one. He made some revisions to the map, redrew it, and added katakana to his copy to make it more readable.

Zoom in and out of this map – I’d recommend full screen mode. Also viewable here

This map is known as the “Revised and Complete World Map” which supposedly came out in 1785. If you compare it to the original (Ricci’s) you can see there’s a bit more detail, especially in and around Asia. The main difference is the art style (definitely more Japanese/Asian) as well as the fact that it’s readable in Japanese, which is pretty cool.

Some interesting things about this map (as well as Ricci’s map):

• Florida is the “Land of flowers”
• The Sahara Desert seems to have a lot more water than I imagine it, at least
• “Sea of Japan” is omitted in this one, even though it’s in Ricci’s original

And I’m sure there are a ton of other interesting things in there, just waiting to be discovered. I’m guessing (someone will have to let me know) that a lot of the translations on this map come from Italian, which is a language I do not speak, though a lot of the katakana on this map definitely are close enough to the English versions where you can figure them out. イタリア is still イタリア, anyways.

The really interesting thing to me is that this is considered to be one of the first mainstream world maps in Japan. It was 1785 for goodness sakes! That’s almost 200 years after Ricci made his world maps, which were pretty darn good. I’m guessing this was mostly caused by how closed off Japan was from the rest of the world… but still, 1785 wasn’t that long ago if you think about it!

“Modern” Maps Of Japan

The guy who did the revised world map (Nagakubo Sekisui) also did some of the first “good” maps of Japan (he wasn’t only a copycat). He was the first Japanese map maker to use “geographical coordinates.” Seems like something you’d want to do, though I’m no map maker. As you can see in the map above, Hokkaido (Ezo, back then) was omitted from this map, apparently because this area wasn’t totally known yet. It’s Japanese frontier country, after all. You can find a lot of his works here, which are pretty nice, if you’re into that kind of thing (talking about maps, you sicko).

There was another (arguably much better) map-maker in town at around the same time, though, who’s name was Ino Tadataka, though he wasn’t as well known for quite a while (now he’s like the cartographer of Japanese history books). Tadataka was hired by the Shogun himself to make a map of Japan. He spent the last 17 years of his life working on this map (which sadly, he didn’t live to see finished). He supposedly spent 3,736 days taking measurements, traveling nearly 35,000 kilometers, working to finish a 1:216,000 map of the entire coastline of Japan. He died in 1818, but his team finished it 1821.

Part of his map – the 3d and 2d mix is pretty interesting, I think

The maps by Nagakubo were widely distributed and used up until the 1860s, even though they weren’t as good as Ino’s. Ino’s maps were kept secret by the Shogun for a while, plus they came out much later (1821 versus 1785). Ino’s maps were of much higher quality, though (and quality is king, I’d say), and were used for much longer (as late as 1924) due to their incredible accuracy (much of it accurate to 1/1000 of a degree!). Ino also worked on maps of Hokkaido, as well. He even has a statue to commemorate his map making skillz.

Into The Future

Of course, the future has brought us an unprecedented level of map accuracy. With satellite images, technology, yadda yadda, maps are pretty good. One of my favorite “new” map features is of course Google Street View. Not only can you see a top down view of Japan, but you can get right down into almost any street, and see a 360 degree picture of that particular part of that particular street. If someone told me you’ll be able to do that ten years ago, I’d probably have thought they were crazy.

Makes me wonder, though – Did people back then think “this map is as good as it gets!” just like I’m doing with maps right now? I imagine there are some things that can be done, like 3D rendering of land height / etc., but what else is there to do? I suppose there’s a lot of crowdsourced options, where people add in tons of information about local spots, which would help people find more interesting things, but where do you go from there?

Anyways, as you can see, Japan has come a long way in terms of how they see the world and how they see themselves (from a map-perspective, anyways). I kind of miss the old style maps – they definitely were as artistic as they were useful (or just artistic, in some cases). Maps nowadays are way more useful, but they lack the same style and feeling that old maps had. I guess that’s because maps aren’t really hand drawn anymore. Those were the days, eh?