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To The Colorful Orient Around The World -- Why Not? -- Celebrating NYK's New Motorized Passenger Ships
Finely illustrated map of the world, published to promote the NYK Line's services to Asia, etc.
Issued in the year after the NYK Line introduced motorized passenger ships. The illustrations and text on the verso provide images of tourist destinations, fine NYK accommodations and promote its tourist services.
The NYK Line
The NYK Line (Nippon Yusen Kaisha) is a Japanese shipping company and is a member of the Mitsubishi keiretsu. The company has its headquarters in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It currently has a fleet of about 800 ships, which includes container ships, tankers, bulk and woodchip carriers, Ro-Ro car carriers, reefer vessels, LNG carriers, and cruise ships.
The company traces its history back to the Tsukumo Shokai Shipping company founded by the Tosa clan in 1870. In 1875, as the renamed Mitsubishi Shokai, the company inaugurated Japan's first passenger liner service, with a route from Yokohama to Shanghai; and in that same year, the company name was changed to Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Company. In 1885, a merger with Kyodo Unyu Kaisha (founded 1882) led to the adoption of the company's present name.
The merged company had a fleet of 58 steamships and expanded its operations rapidly, first to other Asian ports and then worldwide, with a line service to London being inaugurated in 1899.
In the first half of the 20th Century, the majority of Japanese merchant ships, tankers and liners sailed under the NYK banner. Regular services linked Kobe and Yokohama with South America, Batavia, Melbourne, Cape Town; and frequent crossings to San Francisco and Seattle. Other routes connected local Chinese cabotage vessels on the Chinese coasts and upper Yangtze.
Ocean routes went east from Japan to Vancouver (Canada) or Seattle. Another way was to stop in Hawaii, and continue to San Francisco and the Panama Canal. The next commercial routes were south from Japan, across the East China Sea. These went to South East Asia, the China coasts, and towards India and the Indian Ocean, to Europe or Batavia (Dutch Indies), or Australia and New Zealand. The fastest services took ten days from Yokohama to Seattle, and one month to Europe.
NYK introduced its first passenger motor ships in 1929.
Rarity
The map was first issued about 1926 and is apparently quite scarce on the market.
![(Apollo 14 - Recovery Tracking Manuscript) [Post lunar landing recovery map and related ephemera from aboard USS New Orleans including NASA issued Apollo 14 insignia patch] Apollo Mission Plotting Chart (AMP) 4th Apollo Edition, January 1969.](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/76611.jpg)
