Culture always flows downstream from the place of higher culture. By culture here we mean ways of life and their constituent elements. New systems were established in Japan and Europe because both were attracted by the ways of life and their constituent elements brought to them across the seas from the ancient civilizations of Asia. In order to adopt these elements of Asian civilization, they had to pay with vast amounts of precious metals, and when the price became too high they were forced to find ways of stopping the flow. Europe_s establishment of the modern world system spanning the Atlantic Ocean was one solution to this problem; Japan_s national seclusion bringing everything within its own borders was another.
From the perspectives of both world history and the history of civilization, the early modern eras in Europe and Japan had the same significance: they arose through the development of new systems of economic independence from Asia. However, the Asian civilizations that Europe and Japan escaped from were not the same. While Japan was mainly involved with Chinese civilization via the China Sea, Europe was mainly involved with Islamic civilization via the Indian Ocean. But the early modern system and national seclusion were both processes through which they assimilated the essence of these ancient Asian civilizations and were freed from their yearning for them.
