digitization and scale: a kuni-ezu map

Look at this amazing map: I’m not a Japanese scholar, so I’m not going to have a good explanation of this, but my understanding is that it’s an 1837 version of a 16th-century map of the Ōmi prefecture. It’s part of the map collections at Stanford and it was just recently digitized, in advance of the Primary Source Symposium, where it was the focus of a talk by Kären Wigen. ((As a relevant aside, the symposium was a delightful chance to learn more about a whole lot of stuff I didn’t know much about and to get to know scholars outside my usual early modern books circle, so my thanks to Elaine Treharne and Kathryn Starkey for the invitation.)) The map is gorgeous, as is its digitization. Look at the texture captured when you zoom in (click on the map to go play with it yourself; it’s a CC BY-NC license, so go…