Sangoku Tsūran Zusetsu

Sangoku Tsūran Zusetsu (三国通覧図説, An Illustrated Description of Three Countries) by Hayashi Shihei (1738–1793) was published in Japan in 1786.^[1] This book represents one of the earliest attempts to define Japan in terms of its outer boundaries. It represented a modern effort to distinguish Japan from the neighboring nations.^[2]

The book describes those three surrounding nations: the Joseon Dynasty (Korea), the Ryukyu Kingdom (Ryukyu Islands/Okinawa) and Ezo (Hokkaido),^[3] as well as the yet uninhabited Bonin Islands.^[4]

A copy of the Sangoku Tsūran Zusetsu was brought to Europe by Isaac Titsingh. In Paris, the text represented the first appearance of Korean han'gŭl in Europe.^[4] After Titsingh's death, the printed original and Titsingh's translation were purchased by Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat at the Collège de France, where—through a series of errors on Abel-Rémusat's part—it gave the Bonin Islands their name.^[5] After Rémusat's death, Julius Klaproth at the Institut Royal in Paris published his version of Titsingh's work.^[5] In 1832, the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland supported the posthumous abridged publication of Titsingh's French translation.^[6][7]

• List of Japanese classic texts
• Bonin Islands

• Cullen, Louis M. (2003), A History of Japan, 1582–1941: Internal and External Worlds, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521821551, OCLC 50694793.
• Hayashi, Shihei (1786), 三国通覧図説 [Sangoku Tsūran Zusetsu, An Illustrated Description of the Three Kingdoms], Tokyo: autograph manuscript, OCLC 44014900.
• Klaproth, Julius (1832), San Kokf Tsou Ran To Sets, ou, Aperçu Général des Trois Royaumes (in French), Paris: Oriental Translation Fund..., OCLC 2563166.
• Kublin, Hyman (March 1953), "The Discovery of the Bonin Islands: A Reexamination" (PDF), Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 43, Milton Park: Taylor & Francis, pp. 27–46, JSTOR 2561081.
• Morris-Suzuki, Tessa (1997), Re-inventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation, Armonk: Sharpe, ISBN 9780765633415, OCLC 471751407.
• Traganou, Jilly (2004), The Tōkaidō Road: Traveling and Rrepresentation in Edo and Meiji Japan, New York: Rutledge Curzon, ISBN 9780415310918, OCLC 52347509.
• Vos, Ken (2006), Accidental Acquisitions: The Nineteenth-Century Korean Collections in the National Museum of Ethnology, Part 1 (PDF), National Museum of Ethnology, archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-06-22.

• Waseda University — Hayashi Shihei. (1785). 三国通覧図説 (Sangoku Tsuran Zusetsu)