The New International Encyclopædia/Kuro Shiwo

​KURO SHIWO, ko̅o̅′rō̇ shē′vō̇ (Japanese, black current). A great current of the Pacific Ocean, washing the southeastern shores of Asia. It has its source in the north equatorial current, which, flowing westward, is partially deflected by the Philippine Islands and Formosa, and takes a northerly course into the Eastern Sea. Here the Kuro Shiwo, under the influence of the southwesterly monsoon, bears off to the northeast past the shores of the Japan Archipelago, gradually taking a more easterly direction and merging with the drift that crosses the Pacific between latitudes 40° and 50° N. The color of the stream is a deep blue. Its temperature is 5° to 12° above the normal temperature of the sea at a given latitude, and its velocity varies from 1 to 3.5 miles per hour. The rate of flow varies with the seasons; during the late spring and summer months it is accelerated by the southwest monsoons, while the prevailing northeasterlies that blow from September to March retard or wholly obliterate the current. The mass of moving water is only about one-half of that carried by the Gulf Stream through the Straits of Florida. A branch of the Kuro Shiwo passes into the Yellow Sea, and a second branch into the Japan Sea; but it sends off no arm northward through the Bering Sea, as has been commonly supposed, the northerly current of the Bering Sea being due to local conditions. The view that the Kuro Shiwo moderates the climate of the Pacific shores of North America is not based upon fact, their moisture and warmth being caused by a general drift eastward due to the prevailing winds of the North Pacific. Consult: Wild, Thalassa (London, 1877); Report of the United States Coast Survey for 1880 (Washington, 1882).