This copy is the rare second state. According to Toshikazu Kaida, only five examples have been recorded, including one at the East Asia Library, University of Washington, and two in private collections. 

The largest part of the map is dedicated to the 'Jambu-Dvipa' with the sacred 'Lake of Anavatapta' (Lake Manasarovar in the Himalayas) at its centre, from which the four rivers - the Ganges, Oxus, Indus, and Tarim - flow. This depiction was based on the Japanese version of Hsuan-Tsang's Chinese narrative, the ‘Si-yu-ki’, printed as late as 1653. Here, numerous details are given, including the interesting feature of the so-called 'iron-gate', shown as an oversized square, and the path taken by the monk whilst crossing the forbidden mountain systems after leaving Samarkand. 

In the upper left corner, there are one hundred and two references from Buddhist holy writings and Chinese annals are mentioned to lend authority to the map. The text that dominates much of this map is Chinese, except for a few Japanese characters in the depiction of the European countries. Europe, located in the upper left and rendered as a group of islands encompasses Iceland, England, Scandinavia, Poland, Hungary, and Turkey, but deliberately omits the Iberian Peninsula.

At the lower right, South America is featured as an island south of Japan with a small peninsula, as part of Central America; only a few place names appear but include four Chinese characters whose phonetical Japanese reading is 'A-ME-RI-KA'. North of Japan, a land bridge joins Asia with an unnamed landmass, presumably North America.

The Sunderland Collection

The earliest known world map in Japan is the ‘Gotenjiku Zu’ ('Map of the Five Indies') by the priest Jukai dating from 1364 and now preserved in Hōryū-ji Temple in Nara. However, Hōtan's map was revolutionary in being the first printed map from Japan to introduce detailed Western cartographic information into a traditional Buddhist cosmological view, and to attempt to merge the two together into a comprehensible form. It became the prototype for all subsequent Buddhist world maps printed in Japan until the late nineteenth century.

This map celebrates the famous pilgrimage route of the Chinese Buddhist priest Hsuan-Tsang (or Xuan Zhuang, Genjo in Japanese, 602–664 CE), who travelled to India to visit sacred Buddhist places, and also to collect holy Sanskrit writings. Its popularity is evidenced by the fact that although the map is dated 1710, it was reissued unchanged in numerous editions through to about 1815 and spawned innumerable copies and derivatives over the next 150 years.

A superb example of the first Japanese printed map to depict the world, including Europe and America, from a Buddhist cosmographical perspective. The author, Soshun Hōtan Naniwashi (1654–1728) was a scholar-priest and founder of the Kegonji Temple in Kyoto.

The First Buddhist World Map Printed in Japan