In an academic English class, each of us drew our
original maps, and we could see various ones drawn by classmates from various
countries such as Singapore, China, South Korea, the Philippines and also
Japan. These are what I felt and what I thought, writing a world map and seeing
other ones.
First, it was too difficult for me to draw a map with
perfect geographical features and perfect positional relationships. There
should be two reasons why I couldn’t so. One reason is that although I had a
great many opportunity in my life to see world maps in many places such as my
house (actually, my family pasted a world map on the wall in the bathroom, so I
could see it every time), my textbooks and my terrestrial globe, the maps
for my practical use actually focused on specific areas of particular countries
so that we can find where the railroads and superhighways run. Even though when
we go abroad , or “the world” outside of our native country, it is not an appropriate
choice to take a “world” map with us. That’s because world maps put emphasis on
broad-views, in other words, they do not put emphasis on details.
Another
reason is that a world map is valuable only if it has a certain purpose. For
example, around the ninth century A.D., religion played a part in the history
of world maps. The maps were created for the penetration of Christian’s
beliefs. In the Age of Discovery, world maps required ocean routes because of
expeditions to unknown countries. These days, there are many kinds of world
maps such as maps for understanding of air pollution, nuclear powers and
interestingly there is a world map for research of “usuge” which means person
who have thin hair. In this way, it is not until a world map has some meanings,
is it effective and valuable. When drawing a world map, I tried to draw
reasonably, or I was sticking to just what I have seen before. If I had tried
to make my original map like “a map for world’s sweets”, the map would have
become something more interesting, because this tells others my character which
I am a kind of person who enjoys eating. Someone might think it is nonsense,
but this map do has a purpose of showing my personality. Second, I could read
the classmate’s way of thinking from their maps. Naturally it is harder to show
our personality in our maps than our pictures because maps require similar
outlooks in some degree. However, when drawing a world map, we have to condense
the very huge world into the size of our palms, therefore we must pick up and
focus on some part of the world to tell what we really want to draw. For
instance, my hometown, Ehime is the most precious part of Japan for me, so I
didn’t forget to draw Shikoku, where Ehime is located. Thus, our original world
maps suggest our hidden feelings such as our home country, interest, and ignorance
about them.
Drawing a world map gave me thinking times.
By drawing it, I found myself in blind ignorance of the world, at the same
time, I thought something better could be created if I clarified my purpose of
drawing a world map. By seeing other’s maps, I felt an original world map is a
kind of message taken from individual classmates. Some maps looked similar, but
watching carefully, they were slightly different. This comes from different
sense of value and way of thinking. At first, I was wondering why do we have to
draw world maps, but now I thank this opportunity from the bottom of my heart.
Mitsumi
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