was a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

samurai, geographer and explorer. Mogami was born in

Dewa Province was a province of Japan comprising modern-day Yamagata Prefecture and Akita Prefecture, except for the city of Kazuno and the town of Kosaka. Dewa bordered on Mutsu and Echigō Provinces. Its abbreviated form name was . History Early per ...

in what is now part of

Yamagata Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. It has a population of 1,005,926 (1 February 2025) and an area of 9,325 Square kilometre, km2 (3,600 Square mile, sq mi). Its neighbours are Akita Prefectu ...

). He explored and mapped

Hokkaido is the list of islands of Japan by area, second-largest island of Japan and comprises the largest and northernmost prefectures of Japan, prefecture, making up its own list of regions of Japan, region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō fr ...

and

Sakhalin Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, p=səxɐˈlʲin) is an island in Northeast Asia. Its north coast lies off the southeastern coast of Khabarovsk Krai in Russia, while its southern tip lies north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. An islan ...

and some of the

Kuril Islands The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands are a volcanic archipelago administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast in the Russian Far East. The islands stretch approximately northeast from Hokkaido in Japan to Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, separating the ...

in 1785–1786. In his reports to the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. The Tokugawa shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, ending the civil wars ...

, he emphasized the need to defend the islands. He compiled a preliminary Ainu-Japanese dictionary in ''Ezo Soshi''.

Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Mogami Tokunai,

OCLC OCLC, Inc. See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was founded in 1967 as the ...

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...

encompasses roughly 20+ works in 40+ publications in 3 languages and 130+ library holdings. WorldCat Identities 最上德內1754 or 5-1836
/ref> *蝦夷草紙 (1790) *蝦夷國風俗人情之沙汰 (1791) *蝦夷方言藻汐草 (1804) *度量衡統 (1804)

Notes

References

*最上徳内 150年祭実行委員会 (Mogami Tokunai Sesquicentennial Committee). (1987). 最上徳内の遺徳を偲ぶ: 百五十年祭記念誌 (''Mogami Tokunai no itoku o shinobu: hyaku-gojūnensai kinenshi''
OCLC 022705749
*Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric and Käthe Roth. (2005)
''Japan encyclopedia.''
Cambridge:

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...

.
OCLC 58053128

External links

1755 births 1836 deaths Deified Japanese men {{geographer-stub