In “Maps are Strange,” Berry (2006) describes a map as a graphic representation where a combination of codes is used to construct the environment. In premodern and early modern mapmaking art, the most common codes could be classified as iconic, linguistic, and presentational. This essay will focus on these codes and their appearance in the chosen map. The selected map is the 1790 Chikyū bankoku sankai yochi zenzusetsu, roughly translated to Sekisui’s map of the world.
Berry asserts that constructing a map is vital in helping the audience pick out and create important constructs concerning that space. For example, Sekisui’s map of the world has Asia (or rather China) in the middle. This is significantly different from popular maps, such as the Mercator projecting. This map puts Africa and Europe, with America and Asia on the sides, at the center to indicate the power relations bestowed by colonialism and modern-day politics, which involves an underdeveloped Africa due to European and White imperialism. Similarly, Sekisui’s map of the world alludes to China’s centrality in the world. In the old days, China referred to itself as the central kingdom surrounded by its tributes, such as Choson Korea and Japan. By putting China at the center, the map creator communicates that China was the most powerful empire, and the world revolved around it just like colonialism made Europe the king.
According to Berry (2006), the iconic code inventories the environment by communicating the features of a space the mapmaker chose to represent. Sometimes, the map might have a key to help the audience understand the representation and logic used. The most common iconic signs are line, which indicates things that take a linear or line appearance, such as roads and rivers, figures, such as triangles to mean a mountain or circles to suggest cities, and color blocks to show significant differences between signs, such as deep or shallow tints to signify power differences.
The chosen map shows these three codes in profound ways. For example, lines are particularly easy to identify in contents and regions that are not densely populated, such as Africa (white), Europe (yellow), North American (slightly reddish), and South America (bluish). South America has more lines than other continents. These lines appear to signify rivers rather than roads because, in 1790, not many roads would have been highly developed, as extensively as indicated in this map.
This map has many figures. Most are hard to understand due to clarity issues within the diagram and the Chinese letters that often have a Japanese feeling. However, one can see raised regions to mean mountains, joined raised places to signify a range, and the dots to indicate population. Notice how Asia has more dots than other areas, thus asserting its status as the most populous empire in humankind’s history.
Last but not least are the hues to indicate differences. For instance, the map creator used white for Africa, yellow for Europe, red for Asia, orange-red for North America, dark blue for South America, and dark red for the Antarctic border. It is hard to determine why these colors were used. However, drawing from the history of Europe and Asia, such as the spread of Christianity and colonization, one can argue that Europe and China were in perfect contradiction to one other despite their growing visibility in global politics. Although the map has a Japanese effect, the relative powerlessness of Japan at that time, including self-isolation and its relations with China indicate that China was more powerful.
Berry (2006) argues that codes show three more features: stability, generic, and versatility. First, stability means that a particular element within a map will mean the same thing every time it appears on the map. For example, the lines in each continent indicate rivers. I arrive at this conclusion because the lines occur and increase in frequency when the raised figures showing mountains are present and many. That is why South America has more lines, but short and irregular, possibly suggesting a river basin or system, such as Amazon. In Africa, the lines are more continuous and last longer, indicating many long rivers, such as the Nile.
Second, generic refers to the “limited, fixed, and putatively standard variables” (p. 64) that remove the life from each representation and imbue it with generic characteristics, such as lines to indicate rivers and dots to mean people, regardless of the unique aspects of each region.
Third, versatility speaks to the representation of finely visible and invisible things, such as social constructs or environmental concepts. For instance, many rivers and high places in South America could allude to its fertility. In contrast, the widespread representation of this in Africa could indicate that some regions are wet, whereas the vast spaces in the center are either drier or unexplored. Unexplored is a better perspective considering that even though the map indicates that the Antarctic region is unpopulated, the areas below Africa and South America have lighter hues to indicate their unexplored nature. Again these are just speculations as the map’s keys are not clear.