A hunting map of the Japanese empire (1941), highlighting game locations in Japan, Korea, and Manchuria.

A few thoughts:

1) It's hard to ignore the centrality of the Changbai Mountains to the geography of hunting outside Japan.

Most of the big game travel corridors correspond to this range, stretching from northern Korea (Mt. Paekdu) into Heilongjiang and Jilin Provinces.

2) The inclusion of major cities and the railways connecting them gives the map an almost touristic feel.

Korea was prime destination for metropolitan hunters, who sought tiger above all else. This included Kermit Roosevelt, son of Teddy, who made a trip to Korea in the 1920s.

3) The static nature of representation, as if bears, foxes, and tigers were fixed in space.

I imagine this map was good for firing the imagination of huntsmen in Japan, but next to useless on the ground.

For that they needed local trackers, on whom they depended heavily.

4/ This map was brought to my attention by Joseph Seeley (of UVA), whose written extensively on the place of animals in the Japanese empire.

https://academic.oup.com/envhis/article-abstract/20/3/475/436802

The source is a treatise on hunting in Japan, replete with a handy guide to trapping:

https://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1067577