ABSTRACT
Japan-centered world maps have long been common in Japan at least since the seventeenth century; they are the norm in Japan today, and are used widely in Japanese school atlases, just as European schools undoubtedly use Europe-centered world maps. The notion of a China-centered world order was first proposed in East Asia before Christ. This world order is a visualized schematization of a Chinese conception of "center and periphery," with China at the center, surrounded by the "barbarians of the four directions." This map shows the known world as a round land mass, surrounded by a sea, which is inside a doughnut-shaped continent. Inside the continent, lies the sea with scattered islands. This visualized China-centered map reminds us of the world map of Hereford Cathedral in England, which is called Orbis Terrarum of Medieval Europe. Cartographies deriving from the Shan-hai ching later had a profound influence on Buddhist India-centered maps, in which the same names and countries also appeared.
