Restoring the Name ‘East Sea’ for ‘Japan Sea’: Strategic Choice between Continental and Maritime Cartographic Traditions

Historically, there were two exploration perspectives for East Asia — the continental and the maritime—which produced two distinct cartographic traditions responsible for divergent names of places and seas in this region of the globe. The continental perspective, developed by Russians as they expanded eastward across the Eurasian land-bridge, viewed the large body of water around East Asia and Siberia logically as Vostochnoe More-Akiyan—the “Eastern Sea-Ocean.” However, from the maritime perspective developed by western European explorers (Magellan, Drake, Cook, La Perouse and others) who were approaching East Asia by sea via South America or South Africa, the same semi-enclosed bodies of water appeared to them as really part of the Pacific Ocean. These two distinct perspectives, coming from opposite directions, created alternative names for the Pacific Ocean and for the semi-enclosed seas behind island chains strung along the rim of Asia. While it is true that the western maritime cartographic tradition became the more influential standard in cartography, it did not completely erase all the names the Russians had developed from their continental perspective. This explains overlapping names for the same geographical spaces, and the attendant problems of standardization of pelagonyms in East Asia. There is a definite need to return to the earliest historical names and negotiate their acceptance by all concerned.