September 1936 "Five Japans" (Fortune; signed Harrison)
The object is a double-page color pictorial map, photographed as a full spread with two closer details. The left page carries four small thematic maps of Japan and its neighboring territories, numbered I through IV, together with a "Raw Materials" statistical panel; the right page carries the title "FIVE JAPANS" in black serif capitals, five numbered explanatory texts, and a fifth map, "V — Rock and Metal," with a topography diagram and a "Scale of Miles." A vertical center fold divides the two pages. In the upper left of the left page, the Japanese characters 日本 appear in red above a red chrysanthemum crest. The signature "Harrison" is printed in red with a yellow offset tone in the lower right corner of the right page. The paper has an overall tan tone. Soft washes carry the color: ochre and tan landmasses, red-orange for Korea, Manchu-kuo, and Formosa, green arable land, blue-grey seas, red city dots. A small tear is visible at the lower right edge near the signature, with light edge wear elsewhere. Printed text, credits, and marks. The title reads "FIVE JAPANS." The five sections are headed: "I — Coal and Iron," "II — The Japanese People," "III — Land to Till," "IV — Six Cities," and "V — Rock and Metal." Each section pairs an explanatory text with a map. A separate "RAW MATERIALS" panel presents thirteen pie charts headed: "Coal," "Iron Ore," "Oil," "Copper," "Lead," "Zinc," "Tin," "Aluminium," "Nickel," "Cotton," "Wool," "Rubber," and "Wood Pulp." The panel gives an averaged split of 46 percent domestic, 45 percent foreign, and 8 percent colonial sources. Place names visible across the sheet include Japan, Manchu-kuo, China, Siberia, Korea, Formosa, the Philippines, and Pacific Ocean. Distance annotations mark Shanghai, Hong Kong, Yokohama, and San Francisco at 4,760 miles. The Japanese characters 日本 and a chrysanthemum crest appear at upper left. The printed signature "Harrison" appears at lower right of the right page. No publication statement, publisher imprint, advertisement, or subscription material is visible on the sheet. No handwritten marks are reported. The tear and edge wear described above are observed. Maker and attribution context. The signature "Harrison," printed in the lower right corner, is that of Richard Edes Harrison, making this sheet one of his earliest contributions to Fortune magazine. The sheet is a single-edition insert for the September 1936 issue of Fortune (Rumsey 13204.000), an identification accepted by the curator on 2026-10-04. The publisher is not printed on the sheet; the Fortune September 1936 identification follows Rumsey 13204.000. No other artist, engraver, or printer credit is visible. Geographic, industrial, and audience context. The country of publication is inferred as the United States, resting on the identification of the source as the American magazine Fortune — the September 1936 issue (Rumsey 13204.000), accepted by the curator on 2026-10-04; it is not printed on the object. The map's toponymy — MANCHU-KUO, KOREA, and FORMOSA shown as Japanese possessions — is consistent with September 1936. The object belongs to the genre of pre-war editorial cartography: a magazine foldout intended to give general readers a structured, visual understanding of Japan through resources, population, agriculture, cities, and terrain. Its readership would have been the magazine's American business readership. The map's visual language is that of the illustrated thematic map at its most editorial: hand-drawn coastlines, hand-lettered labels, and pictorial relief hatching, with statistical information carried in bold geometric pie charts rather than tables. The five numbered maps each carry their own legend, and each text block explains the corresponding map. Scale bars are given for each map. The consistent use of red-orange to mark Japanese possessions, green for arable land, and the chrysanthemum emblem gives the sheet an emblematic, designed quality, distinct from a reference atlas. Function, circulation, and archival significance. The object functioned as a single-edition insert for the September 1936 issue of Fortune: a double-page insert meant to be opened out and read as a single visual argument about Japan's material condition in the pre-war years. Its circulation was that of the host periodical — encountered by subscribers and readers in the course of ordinary magazine reading, its center fold a direct trace of that binding context. As an archival document, the map preserves a distinctive pre-war editorial proposition: that Japan could be understood, and its vulnerabilities assessed, through five quantified lenses, with the "Raw Materials" panel's 46/45/8 percent split between domestic, foreign, and colonial sources making resource dependency the visual and statistical center of the argument. The combination of pictorial washes, hand lettering, and statistical diagrams in a single spread documents a moment in American editorial cartography when illustration and data graphics were fused for a general audience. The signature, the emblem, and the toponymy together make the sheet a compact record of how one American magazine chose to picture Japan in the years before the Second World War.
Category: Art & Museums
Year: 1936
Rarity Class: A
Paper & Print Condition
Observed printing characteristics. The geography is carried in soft tonal washes — ochre and tan landmasses, red-orange territorial tints, green arable land, blue-grey seas — overlaid with fine black key lines for coastlines, lettering, and diagram rules; the pie charts and dot-density areas read as flat black. The "Harrison" signature is rendered in red with a yellow offset tone, indicating two ink passes in the signature area. The printed key lines and lettering appear visually crisp at the supplied resolution. The paper shows an overall tan toning, even across the sheet as photographed. A vertical center fold runs the full height of the spread. A small tear is visible at the lower right edge near the signature, with light edge wear along the sheet edges and a few small dark specks on the paper surface. Likely process: probable offset lithography reproducing a watercolor-style original through photomechanical screens; physical examination is required for confirmation. Confidence: Probable. An alternative, letterpress printing from photoengraved plates, is consistent with period magazine insert practice and cannot be excluded from a digital proxy; the smooth tonal gradations of the washes favor the offset reading, stated as comparative likelihood rather than exclusion. Minimum distinguishable colour separations resolvable in the supplied image: 5. This is a floor, not a count.
Provenance & Rarity
[AWAITING CURATORIAL ASSIGNMENT]
Rarity & Condition Summary
Condition: the sheet is toned to an even tan across its surface, with a full-height center fold consistent with its function as a magazine foldout. A small tear is present at the lower right edge near the signature, with light wear along the sheet edges and a few small dark specks on the paper surface; no folds beyond the center crease, no foxing clusters, and no abrasion are visible in the photographed areas. The printed washes, key lines, hand lettering, legends, and the thirteen pie charts of the statistical panel remain legible, and the color reads as dense where photographed. The sheet's verso was not photographed and is unassessed. Rarity: [AWAITING CURATORIAL ASSIGNMENT].
