By ‘novel’ I mean also ‘new’.

Catching up recently by browsing through back issues of Chizu = Map : Journal of the Japan Cartographers Association (Tokyo : c/o Japan Map Center), there fell out a folded map (loose) in issue 2010, 48(2) with its accompanying article (in Japanese, but ‘Contents’ title in Japanese & English) ‘Upside-down map of Japan – East Asia Exchange map’, by SAITO Tadamitsu and SHINTA Hajime on pp. 51-52.

This bilingual, layer- and bathymetric- relief, coloured, map (printed area 72 x 101.5 cm) – ‘Higashi Ajia kōryū chizu’ – is at scale 1:6 000 000. It is centred on Sadoga-shima’s capital, Sawata, at N38° 1’ 55”/E138° 22’ 6” (or N37° 59’/E138° 19’ in ‘The Times’ comprehensive atlas of the world, 13^th edn, 2011).  That is (with North to top), southwest of port of Ryōtsu at, again following ‘The Times’ comprehensive atlas of the world’s 13^th edn, N38° 04’/E138° 25’. An inset at 1:1 500 000 shows Sawata and Ryōtsu on island of Sadoga with much of ‘mainland’ Niigata & Fukushima Prefectures.

Extent (with South to top of map): [just beyond the 2000km circle] – Davao (in The Philippines) – Kunming/[southern] Mongolia – [southern Kamchatka Peninsula marking (but not naming) ‘Vulkan Ichinskaya Sopka’ and (perhaps) ‘Sopka Klyuchevskaya’)].

Only for the cartographically curious; or is it a ‘cartographic curiosity’?

Francis Herbert