Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/140

 years of Japanese occupancy they sent back to Japan enormous quantities of booty of every kind. The Koreans were skilled in making a peculiar kind of glazed pottery, which the Japanese admired very much. So they took the whole colony bodily to Japan, with all their implements, and set them down in western Japan to carry on their industry. This succeeded so well that the celebrated Satsuma ware was the result. The remnants of the descendants of the Koreans are still found in Japan.

Only a few years elapsed before the Japanese applied to the Korean government to be allowed to establish a trading station at Fusan, or rather to re-establish it. Permission was granted, and elaborate laws were made limiting the number of boats that could come annually, the amount of goods they could bring, and the ceremonies that must be gone through. The book in which these details are set down is of formidable size. The perusal of it shows conclusively that Japan assumed a very humble attitude, and that Korea treated her at. best no better than an equal. This trading station may be called the back door of Korea, for her face ever was toward China; and, while considerable trade was carried on by means of these annual trading expeditions of the Japanese, it was as nothing compared with the trade that was carried on with China by junk and overland through Manchuria.