Japanese pictorial map of North America from 1924

Japanese pictorial map of North America from 1924

8129 x 8030

‘There are too many words here to translate. About half of them are just transliterations of corresponding place names.

The others are descriptions of nearby illustrations, such as: In Caribbean see, “Columbus landed here, which he believed to be India. This was the beginning of discovery of American Continent.” In Atlantic Ocean, “Titanic sank because of an iceberg.” Crab and fish in Pacific Ocean says “there are plenty of them.”

Some of the descriptions are prejudices of Japanese people at that time, and I think are reflected by propaganda of Japanese Empire, although somewhat interesting and funny.

Here’s a couple more (my Japanese is only intermediate, so some subtleties might be off):

It marks Portsmouth, New Hampshire (ポーツマス) and says “Russo-Japanese negotiations happened in this city.”

Off of Honolulu it says “Japanese people splendidly make up large numbers of people on all islands.”

Off the west coast of Mexico it says “They are able to excavate lots of copper and silver.”

Over North Dakota the black bar with the two kanji says “Prohibition (of alcohol).”

A more natural translation of message near Hawai’i would read, “Japanese people live on all the Hawaiian islands, making up a large proportion of the population.”

The 大活躍 doesn’t mean “splendid” but rather “very active.”’

North American Remoteness

North American Remoteness

8858 x 8268

‘You can see the bottleneck in the Canadian network near Thunder Bay, Ontario, where there’s only two east-west road links, the Trans-Canada Highway and the Canadian National Railway line a bit north of it. Other than those two, you need to go into the US or take a plane to get from one side of Canada to the other’

1587 map of the Americas, Pacific - by Abraham Ortelius

1587 map of the Americas, Pacific - by Abraham Ortelius

[5783 × 4190]

“Very nice map.

“The passage at the bottom of South America is in fact the Strait of Magellan, (Latin: fretum magellanicum). South of it is Terra del Fuego (Spanish: Land of Fire). Cape Horn was not discovered until 1616 proving that Terra del Fuego was not the northern part of what would later be named Antarctica”–doitstuart

Largest ethnicities of Canada and USA

Largest ethnicities of Canada and USA

“British Americans, namely those of English descent but also Scottish and Scots-Irish Americans, are severely under reported in these surveys. Those ethnic Americans in the Southeast are mostly the descendants of old Anglo and Scots-Irish settlers from the colonial era and I’d wager half those “Germans” and “Irish” Americans have substantial Anglo heritage”–Disillusioned_Brit