Baba Nobutake (1 results)

Condition: Very good. VERY RARE FIRST EDITION, AND ONE OF THE EARLIEST WORKS ON ASTRONOMY PRINTED IN JAPAN. "A well-known work on astronomy, that exerted no little influence at this period" (Smith-Mikami). Towards the end of the 17th century, astronomical works by the Jesuits and their Chinese students came to Japan from China. At that time, the local interest in astronomy was increased by the import of modern astronomical instruments from the Netherlands. Baba (d. 1715) had no knowledge of the heliocentric worldview; his work is strongly influenced by You Yi's Tianjing huowen, published in China around 1675, and by neo-Confucianism. The illustrations mainly show constellations and astronomical instruments, a map of the world is particularly noteworthy, a simplified copy based on the second edition of Matteo Ricci's map published in Nanking in 1600, of which no copy has survived. In 1720, the eighth Shogun, Tokugawa Yoshimune, rescinded a prohibition on Chinese books containing European science that had been in force in Japan since 1630. Thereafter, the ban pertained only to books concerning Christianity or written by Christians. A fascinating early treatise, including a double-page world map. Around the turn of the eighteenth century, there seems to have been some added interest given to the study of astronomy in Japan by the introduction of certain instruments imported from Holland: globes, navigational charts, sextants, time-pieces, telescopes, sun-dials, etc. With the help of information the scholars obtained from these devices, Baba Nobutake (Oda Genko) produced works like this example and Tenmon zusetsu (Illustrated Astronomical Diagrams) (1713). These books gained a great contemporary reputation particularly because of their explanation of solar eclipses, which in Japan as elsewhere in the world had been a subject for much superstition. The world map is printed on a single sheet, but the concertina nature of the folding of the leaves has left half of the map with Africa, Europe, and Asia on the right side of one page opening, while the half with America is on the left side of the following opening. The Americas are shown in a contorted but recognizable form: the Rivers Platte and Amazon are apparent, as is Florida and the Isthmus of Panama. Around the South Pole is a large continent, while the north seems clear of any large landmasses.