Note 568 — Chapter IX · —Oceans And Enclosed Seas

Vicinal location about an enclosed basin produces more rapidly a unification of race and culture, when some ethnic relationship and affinity already exists among the peoples inhabiting its shores. As in the ancient and medieval Mediterranean, so in the Yellow Sea of Asia, the working of this principle is apparent. The presence along its coasts of divergent but kindred peoples like the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese, allowed these to be easily assimilated to a Yellow Sea race and to absorb quickly any later infusion, like that of the Tatars and Manchus. China, by reason of its larger area, long-drawn coast, massive population, and early civilization, was the dominant factor in this basin; Korea and Japan were its culture colonies-a fact that justifies the phrase calling "China the Rome of the Far East." Historical Japan began on the island of Kiu-sui, facing the Yellow Sea. Like Korea, it derived its writing, its fantastic medical notions, its industrial methods, some features of its government administration, its Buddhism and its religion of Confucius from the people about the lower Hoangho.568 Three centuries ago Japan had its colony on Korean soil at Fusan, the Calais of the East.569 For purposes of piracy and smuggling Japanese penetrated far up the rivers of China. Korea has kept in touch with China by an active trade and diplomatic relations through the centuries.