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Journalism of Courage
Modern cartographers beware: other nations are watching you
Maps have a clear-cut way of dividing the world. Geography becomes static when laid out over two dimensions; there is little space to recognise competing claims over territory. Yet,mapmakers manage to introduce ambiguity and spark diplomatic crises. Witness Japans ire at a perceived slight by Indias official mapmaking agency,the Survey of India. It apparently omitted to name a sea in the western Pacific between the Japanese archipelago and the Asian continent. Tokyos preferred name for the sea is the Sea of Japan. This is contested by the Koreas.
Now Japan is going to take up the matter with the surveyor general. Yet,India can hardly claim that Japan is over-reacting when it is so quick to take umbrage over cartographical errors,deliberate and otherwise,related to its territories. Maps in which Kashmir figures routinely touch off accusatory rhetoric and outrage. Last year,Chinas ambassador to India was embroiled in a heated exchange over a map produced by a Chinese company that showed Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh as part of China. But then India is also the country with a law that makes it illegal for anyone to publish a map of India that does not conform to the official version.
It is not uncommon for countries to fight their battles over disputed territories by proxy,through maps. But sometimes maps can solve as many problems as they create. At the height of the dispute between China and Japan over islands in the East China Sea,Apples new mapping software presented a novel solution: duplication. It simply showed two sets of the islands appearing next to each other one for Japan and one for China.
