“The Map the Count Couldn’t Read: Zipangu Was Never Japan”
The cartographic truth Marco Polo mapped – and the 16th century distorted.

Above is a portion of an Actual Map. Facsimile of a 1513 map by Glareanus showing the northern hemisphere on an equidistant polar projection. Frontispice from: Close, C.F. (1905). "Glareanus". Royal Engineers Journal1: 393-305.

🪶 THE SMOKING QUILL | June 15, 2025

Count Paul Teleki’s Zipangu Delusion: When Scholars Can’t Read a Map

And Why Zipangu = Chryse = The Philippines, Always Was.

🔥 A Scholar Unmasked

Count Paul Teleki, a 20th-century Hungarian scholar, offered what has become one of the more frequently cited Eurocentric summaries of Zipangu (aka Cipangu or Zipangri) cartography. Yet, in his eagerness to align with post-Jesuit narratives, Teleki commits historical malpractice. His assertions—most egregiously that Zipangu equated to Japan—flatly ignore thousands of years of credible geographic tradition and evidence.

Let’s expose why.

🔍 Cartographic Blindness: When a Count Couldn't Read a Map

🗺️ Full literal translation (no paraphrasing)

Both pages from Paul Teleki’s text “Les Preuves Cartographiques des Premières Notions des Européens sur les Îles du Japon Avant et Après sa Découverte” [Our added notations in brackets]:

Page 1 (starting at title CXLI)

THE CARTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE
OF THE FIRST EUROPEAN NOTIONS ABOUT THE ISLANDS OF JAPAN BEFORE AND AFTER ITS DISCOVERY

By Count Paul TELEKI (Budapest)

It is to Marco Polo that Europe owes its first notions of the islands of Japan [False conflation, he never tested Polo's criteria]. His chapter on the island of Zipangu is the only source for geographers and cartographers of the Middle Ages and of the first part of the 16th century. Thus all the legends relating to these islands — or rather to this island, for Polo speaks only in the singular — all the legends found on the maps of these times are nothing more than summaries, more or less poor, of this chapter. [If this is true, academic rigor was discarded completely and the process failed us all].

The first map on which Zipangu is found is that of the Venetian monk Fra Mauro in 1459 [Al-Idrisi included Zangi as a Philippine Island in 1154 before Marco Polo, but it may be the first after Polo. See below]. The round shape of his map forced him to place all the islands of Asia in the space that remained between this continent and the frame of the map. [This range is consistent with Luzon (approx. 12°–20°N), but Japan begins at 32°N. Anyone conflating this with Japan has not read basic coordinates. It truly requires fraud to say such a thing when those islands are in a progressive order with Zipangu mapped North of Borneo and Southeast of South China which has many designations from Mauro. Claiming that to be Japan is illiterate.]

Behaim, the author of the famous globe of Nuremberg, places Zipangu between 8° and 30° North latitude, approximately 20° from the coast of the Asian continent, a position already assigned to it by Toscanelli [Editor’s Note: This range is consistent with Luzon (approx. 12°–20°N), but Japan begins at 32°N. Anyone conflating this with Japan has not read basic coordinates]. Behaim gave it a rectangular shape [Similar to Luzon, duh!]. Waldseemüller, to whom America owes its name [False, Ameruca is the name of the plumed serpent worshiped in the Americas, and they are named after it. In his Division of the Earth, Noah called those continents Fara (Jub. 8-9).], placed it on his 1507 map between Asia and the island representing North America [Misleading as Zipangu of Marco Polo is affixed to the South China Sea, not America. It is America which is drawn out of position missing the Pacific on that map], parallel to the latter, but also copying Behaim [Also, affixed Zipangu as Luzon in the South China Sea. Claiming because the Americas begin to appear on maps, it is connected to them is illiterate.]. Thus, Toscanelli, Behaim, and Waldseemüller created the typical Zipangu that is found on most maps of the first half of the 16th century [Yes, in Luzon Island Philippines, not Japan]. The map of the latter — "the first with the name America," discovered a few years ago — should greatly change opinions on...

Page 2 (page number 421)

...an entire series of cartographers of this last century, such as Schöner, Glareanus, who only copied the map of Waldseemüller. [All of these place Zipangu in the Philippines, not Japan. This is witchcraft, not scholarship! See Maps below]

It is only in the second quarter of the century (1526) that Francis the Monk creates the hypothesis and the type of map that connects Asia and America by an isthmus more or less wide forming one of these two continents [This monk was clearly no cartographer and proves illiterate of the paradigm forgetting that Zipangu is an island in the South China Sea, not an isthmus. Unfortunately, this monk also did not know the Bible which defines this Land of Gold as and island, just as Polo does. The drawing is not even a map and should not be treated as such. This is not academic.]. Concerning Japan, this hypothesis is important [There is no hypothesis (educated guess) as every map he just pointed to places Zipangu in the Philippines. This is uneducated propaganda.] because it is always accompanied by the identification of Zipangu with one of the islands of West India [No, that is Luzon, not Japan and this is a lie!], usually with Hispaniola [Found at about 22° which is 10° below Japan and it is Luzon. This is illiterate!]. In express terms, we do not find this identification except with Vopell and Oronce Finé, but on no map of this type do we find any other Zipangu. [See Maps below, this is pathetic research.It appears they did not even read the maps. Oronce Finé labels Zipangu in the Caribbean as Hispanola as Columbus thought he was in the Philippines when claiming such. It remains less than 22° N which is never Japan period. On legible copies of Vopell, there is no label for Zipangu but the island corresponding fits all of these mappings as Luzon. There are tons of maps and most agree Zipangu is Luzon Island, Philippines].

Later — as with Gastaldi — Zipangu is found or rather Cinpagu in the Gulf of Tonsa formed by the two great northern continents [This is completely illiterate as Gastaldi labels Luzon as Cangu. This range is consistent with Luzon (approx. 12°–20°N), but Japan begins at 32°N. Anyone conflating this with Japan has not read basic coordinates.]. But we do not encounter this again until the second half of the 16th century [False, that is illiterate again of many maps. See below], when Japan was already discovered by the Portuguese, who landed on the island of Tanegashima to the south of the Van Diemen Strait in 1542. [False. Zipangu was already found, identified and mapped in the Philippines for more than a century prior to this.]

Nonetheless, Zipangu is found again on many maps of the second half of the 16th century and even on that of Guijlielmus Nicolai Belga in 1603 — reproduced by Coote. [Belga, like nearly all of these maps, places Zipangu as Luzon. Equating it to Japan is not just wrong — it’s cartographic malpractice. See below].

Already in the course of the first ten years following the discovery of the Japanese islands by the Portuguese, we find these islands on the nautical charts of their cartographers [Indeed, and when they move the position of Zipangu from Luzon, they represent Jesuit fraud. Accurate maps existed to the 1744 Bowen Map that fail Portugal's Jesuit claim]. All the maps of this kind — of Portuguese origin or foreign copies — that I have encountered belong to two distinct types very clearly different from each other. And these two types mark the progress of the knowledge of the first Portuguese navigators and merchants [While ignoring the Spanish and earlier, accurate Portuguese records. In other words, this category is propaganda failing the simplest of tests such as actually reading Marco Polo and assessing the resources], who passed from the eastern coast of Kyushu to the western coast of that island, then to Shikoku and into the straits that separate the three principal islands of the empire of the rising sun. [That trip cannot change historic precedence already determined for centuries. In fact, as Zipangu is equated historically as Chryse, this paradigm goes back as early as 43 A.D. with Pomponius Mela who mapped Chryse/Zipangu as the Philippines].

The three oldest maps of these two types that I have held in my hands are the work of the same author, Diego Homem [New to the paradigm and does not mention Zipangu!]. These atlases consulted by me are preserved in Paris, Vienna, and Dresden; they date from 1558, 1561,... [Impertinent, later Jesuit corruptions. This author could not read the maps.]

📜 “This isn’t scholarly error — it’s geographic gaslighting. And with the coordinates, resources, and maps in plain sight, the forgery falls apart.

📚 Solórzano’s Legal Confirmation (1629)

Juan de Solórzano Pereira, the most authoritative legal mind in Spanish colonial law, documents:

“Zipangri… olim Chryse vocabatur… Borneu, Lequios, Philippinas…”
(“Zipangri, formerly called Chryse… Borneo, Lequios, the Philippines…”)

Boom. There it is.

Zipangu = Chryse = The Philippines.

Not only does Pereira destroy the Japanese myth, but he anchors Zipangu into Spanish legal documents, mapping, and empire. And Chryse, of course, traces back to 43 A.D. maps like Pomponius Mela’s, which unanimously placed it in the Philippines.

[Read the Full Blog Post with Source Links]

[For Complete Trail of Maps Leading to Chryse Philippines, Read Garden of Eden Revealed: The Book of Maps now Free in eBook]

🧠 The Resource Test (Infallible)

• Marco Polo described gold, pearls, spices, white pepper, and rich agriculture and many other resources.

• Philippines: 100% match

• Japan: 40% at best

• Resource Test Coming Soon in Blog format. Watch our Videos on Zipangu Philippines

• Part 1: [https://youtu.be/gehAz4mxIEA] (maps and account review)

• Part 2: [https://youtu.be/20IFdD_IOyI] (includes resource test)

• Columbus never intended to land in America. He thought he was in the Philippines and identified Zipangu, Ophir, Uphaz, and Paradise between 10-22° N. Anyone calling that Japan, whose big island begins around 32° N, is not a cartographer in practice offering useless propaganda in which they prove they cannot even read a map.

Zipangu could never have been Japan. The real place of Marco Polo’s Zipangu, Chryse, and ancient gold? The Philippines, specifically Luzon.

🧠 Final Verdict: Teleki Failed the Cartography Exam

Teleki’s work may be popular among Eurocentric scholars, but it fails basic map literacy. He never read the coordinates. He relied on hearsay maps misreading the originals. And he ignored Spanish legal documents that obliterate his claims.

📌 SMOKING QUILL CONCLUSION:

Marco Polo’s Zipangu was never Japan.
It was Luzon, the northern Philippines.
The Jesuits rebranded it. Teleki recycled it.
But the maps never lied—they were just ignored.

Let the record speak again. Zipangu. Chryse. Luzon.
The Golden Island is rediscovered.

🗺️ #ZipanguIsPhilippines #ChryseRevealed #JesuitCartographicFraud
📚 #SmokingQuill #MapTruth #GoldenIslandFound #ZipanguNotJapan #ChryseIsPhilippines #PhilippineMaps
#JesuitRevisionism #MarcoPoloWasRight #HistoricalGeography #AncientIslands