BREESINS Pile OR SCIENCE 
ON THE LIFE HISTORY OF AN ECONOMIC CUTTLEFISH OF JAPAN 
17 
meeting point of these currents is shifted sometimes up and sometimes down, 
oscillating along the northeastern coasts of Honshiu. 
In the Eastern and Yellow Seas (Tun-hai and Hwang-hai) there is a coastal 
water of low salinity which, according to Wada’s testing of drift bottles (1915, 
J. c.), seems to circulate slowly counterclockwise. It is combined with some 
branches of the Kuro-shiwo near the Japanese coasts so that the climate of 
the western coast of Kiushiu is much affected by the high temperature of the 
Kuro-shiwo. The strength of these branches differs in different seasons: they 
are very weak in winter as proved by Mr. Marukawa (10918, J. c.) but strong 
in summer, some entering the Japan Sea through the Tsushima Strait. 
The Japan Sea is an enclosed basin with four narrow outlets: the Tsu- 
shima Strait (Korea Strait), Tsugaru Strait, Soya Strait (La Pérouse Strait) 
and Mamiya Strait (the Gulf of Tartary). In this sea two currents flow: one 
which is called the Liman Current, is colder, and flows south along the Amur 
coast, and the other, which is known under the name of the Tsushima Cur- 
rent, is warmer and runs north along the Japanese coast. Schrenck and 
Makaroff likewise mention that the Liman Current originates in the Okhotsk 
Sea, entering the Japan Sea through the Mamiya Strait, and going into the 
Eastern Sea through the Tsushima Strait along the Korean coast, while the 
Tsushima Current is a branch of the Kuro-shiwo, which comes into this sea 
basin through the strait of its name, and goes in part into the Pacific Ocean 
through the Tsugaru Strait and in part into the Okhotsk Sea through the Soya 
Strait. 
This view is, however, not wholly correct, since the Mamiya Strait is 
really so shallow as not to let pass such a constant stream as the Liman Cur- 
rent, while the Tsushima Current is distinguished from the Kuro-shiwo, being 
by no means so high in salinity as the latter. There is, on the other hand, a 
strong reason to believe that the water of the Japan Sea is not really oceanic 
but rather coastal, circulating counterclockwise, as is usual in such an enclosed 
sea in the North Pacific. The said two currents represent, therefore, in most 
of their parts, nothing but sections of this large circulatory current. Of 
course, the water is by no means simple or isolated, but compound and con- 
nected with those of other seas. For instance, it is combined in the southern 
corner of the Japan Sea with the warmer water coming through the Tsu- 
shima Strait, which water consists, in its turn, of branches of the Kuro-shiwo 
and the coastal water of the Eastern Sea, so that the said Tsushima Current 
