6i8 



NA TURE 



[April 2C), 1886 



the common aim, could not be carried out. The agro- 

 nomical and chemical sections ultimately came under the sole 

 direction of a Japanese Commissioner, and only the topo- 

 graphical and geological sections remained together under the 

 immediate control of the Director who had laid the foundations 

 of the whole undertaking. In order to understand the ill-effect 

 of this division, it is only necessary to mention that the agro- 

 nomical section worked on a different scale from the topographical 

 and geological, and did topographical work for its own pur- 

 poses, independent of that done by the topographical section ! 



The difficulties at the outset were numerous and important. 

 First of all there were those connected with the nature of the 

 work itself The Japanese chain of islands is little more than 

 a huge and complicated range of mountains, which is in parts 

 hardly passable. Travelling along the main roads in Japan is 

 not always very pleasant, but there are no particular hardships. 

 Amongst the mountain*:, however, progress can only be made 

 under great difficulties ; and when a survey has to be made in 

 these regions it demands all the energy and strength of a very 

 strong man. It was necessary, too, in the present instance, in 

 view of the economical wants of the country, to do the work in 

 the shortest possible time. The period originally arranged was 

 twelve years for the wh le work ; and what has been actually 

 done since the beginning showed that it was possible to com- 

 plete the Survey in this time had the staff been complete 

 and the proposed organisation strictly disciplined for, and 

 directed to, the purpose in hand, as might have been done. But, 

 in fact, the staff never was complete, and the regular and con- 

 stant prosecution of the Survey in course of time became more 

 and more difficult, mainly owing to financial considerations. 

 The year before last, for example, no field-work was done at all 

 for this reason. At the outset, too, the training and educating 

 of the assistants and cartograj^hers presented great difficulties, 

 which, owing to the energy and intelligence of the Japanese co- 

 operators, were ultimately overcome. Again, when the stage of 

 publishing was reached, obstacles of a peculiar kind were met 

 with. To publish the map? abroad was not to be thought of. 

 The Department had to pay the cost of publishing out of its 

 own funds, and the work had to be carried out by Japanese. 

 Experiments were made with litliography and heliogravure, but 

 it is found impossible to adopt either of these methods in Japan. 

 Ultimately the Toyodo Engraving Company in Tokio was 

 intrusted with the work, under the constant superintendence and 

 control of the director, and it is curious to note that the maps 

 are all elc/ied on copper, not engraved. Much more might be 

 said of the difficulties which had to be overcome in this wholly 

 new undertaking in Japan ; but a commencement was made 

 with tile work towards the end of 18S0. It soon appeared that 

 the plans of the Survey could only be successfully carried out by 

 a reconnaissance of the whole country in the first place. It 

 appeared necessary to obtain first a general view of the condi- 

 tions of Japan before the special and main work could be 

 effectually eoaimenced. The bro.id features, internal and ex- 

 ternal, of the mountain system of the country had to be ascertained, 

 particularly for the purpose of allowing uniform representation 

 in the special maps to be published later on. The Director 

 commenced this preliminary survey early in 18S1, and decided to 

 prosecute it as far as possible in person. This reconnaissance was 

 completed in the beginning of 1SS4, with a little help from 

 assistants in regard to subordinate details. As an example of 

 the work which this entailed, it may be mentioned that in two 

 years he travelled, mostly on foot, 2000 miles, and that during 

 the five years he was engaged in the work his routes covered 

 about 5000 miles. The surveys in 1881 lasted from May to 

 November, in 1882 from September to December, and the last 

 great journey was from July 1883 to February 1S84. The inter- 

 vals which were spent in the capital were fully occupied ; the 

 orographical and geological sketch-maps (recently exhibited in 

 London), as well as many others, were then produced. On this 

 general survey of the country a topographical and geological 

 map on a scale nf i : 400,000, in five large sheets, was prepared. 

 The first of these, embracing the topography of Northern Japan, 

 ha.s already been published, and might have been examined with 

 others in the Royal Geographical Society. The other parts are 

 in hand, and the record is doubtless already complete in manu- 

 script. 



Both in the reconnaissance and the principal survey, the 

 method employed in the field-work was partly that of flying 

 surveys. The main object was to obtain in the shortest pos- 

 sible time a view of the natural conditions of the country, and to 



produce a map which would be useful for economical and scien- 

 tific purposes. The very detailed surveys of European coun- 

 tries could not, therefore, be taken as e.xaniples to be foUoived. 

 The fundamental consideration was, above all, the economical 

 requirements of the country. Even for military purposes in 

 Japan, a smaller scale, allowing of the application of simpler 

 methods and more rapid progress, is preferable for field and 

 map work. Tn Tokio there is also a Survey Department 

 attached to the General Staff, but it is based on Western methods, 

 and on account of the very large scale adopted many genera- 

 tions must elapse before it is completed. In 1884, when dis- 

 turbances broke out in the Saitama prefecture, the military 

 authorities discovered their lack of maps, and they were com- 

 pelled to obtain maps of the district from the Geological Survey. 

 After this exj^erience, and after the publication of the first sheets 

 of the special map of the Survey, the General Staff would no 

 doubt readily understand the advisability of a system such a^ 

 that applied by the Geological Survey. During recent years in 

 Jap.an interesting results were collected respecting the methods 

 necessary for surveys where rapid progress is required. With 

 regard, for instance, to the amount of work which can be per- 

 formed in a limited time, the sketches exhibited in the Royal 

 Geographical .Society prove of much interest for military, 

 exploring, and colonial surveys. It h.appens frequently that 

 the practical geographer is compelled to explore or survey a 

 given region in the shortest possible -time. During the topo- 

 graphical and geological field-work of the Japan Survey, one of 

 the most important rules observed was that of plotting the rela- 

 tions of space measured or observed in the particular places at 

 once, and according to a definite scale (i : 50,000). The first 

 designs of the maps were, so to say, made in the field in the 

 face of the objects to be represented. In this way the work of 

 the topographer was made as independent as possible of that of 

 the cartographer ; under any other plan the final result would be 

 more arbitrary. The amount of field-work done each day 

 appears to reach the highest limit attainable. In 1881, for 

 instance. Dr. Naumann surveyed, in some cases, routes of 

 32 kilometres in length, and this during the hottest summer 

 months, and in difficult mountainous country. The daily 

 average of Dr. Naumann during the reconnaissance surveys of 

 1881 amounted to 20 kilometres, while the average for the 

 Japanese assistants was 12 kilometres. With regard to the 

 degree of accuracy of the surveys thus made, it appears from an 

 article on them, published in PeU'riiiniiii's Miltkiilnngen for 

 January 1884, that the results, even with this great rapidity, 

 were highly satisfactory. The route Miyako-Morioka, in 

 Northern Japan, for example, shows an error of only 0'6 per 

 cent, for the distance between the terminal points, which in a 

 straight line is 68 kilometres, while the actual route surveyed is 

 100. For reconnaissance purposes this route was surveyed in 

 five days. 



At the commencement of the Survey the technical staff con- 

 sisted of four Europeans — viz. a director, topographer, .agricul- 

 turist, and chemist — and twenty-two Japanese assistants — viz. 

 one geologist, five topographers, five agriculturists, five chemists, 

 and six draughtsmen. The foreign chief of the agricultural 

 fection left the Japanese service at the beginning of 1S81, and 

 the foreign topographer a year later. The services of another 

 foreign agriculturist were obtained at the end of 1883. At 

 present the technical staff consists of two Jap.anese directors, 

 one European in charge of the agricultural section, and thirty 

 Japanese assistants. The results of the Survey are, in the first 

 place, in the shape of maps, of which the following is a 

 list :— 



A. General Maps on the scale of I : 874,000 (at present in 

 manuscripts. 



(1) Geological map by Dr. Naumann and his geological 

 assistants. On this map the distribution of the following geo- 

 logical groups and rccks shown : — Primitive gneiss (violet) ; 

 crystalline schists (light rose carmine) ; Palfeozoic group (neutral 

 tint) ; Mesozoic group, Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous (blue) ; 

 Tertiary ^light green) ; volcanic tufi", corresponding to very 

 modern Tertiary (light yellow) ; granite, quartz porphyry, por- 

 phyry, porphyrite, diorite, diabase, and volcanic rocks. 



(2) Oroplastic map by Dr. Naumann and his topographical 

 assistants. The surface shape is i-epresented by horizontal 

 layers of 200 metres ; the depths of the surrounding seas are 

 shown on the same system. The mountains are marked by 

 successive shades of brown, the sea by shades of blue. This 

 map w as in the late Exhibition of Geographical Appliances. 



