Adaptive Fisheries Governance in Changing Coastal Regions in Japan (International Perspectives in Geography, 13) [1st ed. 2021] 9813342390, 9789813342392

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International Perspectives in Geography AJG Library 13

Akiko Ikeguchi Takafumi Yokoyama Seishiro Sakita   Editors

Adaptive Fisheries Governance in Changing Coastal Regions in Japan

International Perspectives in Geography AJG Library Volume 13

Editor-in-Chief Yuji Murayama, The University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan Series Editors Yoshio Arai, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan Hitoshi Araki, Ritsumeikan University, Shiga, Japan Shigeko Haruyama, Mie University, Mie, Japan Yukio Himiyama, Hokkaido University of Education, Hokkaido, Japan Mizuki Kawabata, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan Taisaku Komeie, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan Jun Matsumoto, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo, Japan Takashi Oguchi, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan Toshihiko Sugai, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan Atsushi Suzuki, Rissho University, Saitama, Japan Teiji Watanabe, Hokkaido University, Hokkaido, Japan Noritaka Yagasaki, Nihon University, Tokyo, Japan Satoshi Yokoyama, Nagoya University, Aichi, Japan

Aim and Scope The AJG Library is published by Springer under the auspices of the Association of Japanese Geographers. This is a scholarly series of international standing. Given the multidisciplinary nature of geography, the objective of the series is to provide an invaluable source of information not only for geographers, but also for students, researchers, teachers, administrators, and professionals outside the discipline. Strong emphasis is placed on the theoretical and empirical understanding of the changing relationships between nature and human activities. The overall aim of the series is to provide readers throughout the world with stimulating and up-to-date scientific outcomes mainly by Japanese and other Asian geographers. Thus, an “Asian” flavor different from the Western way of thinking may be reflected in this series. The AJG Library will be available both in print and online via SpringerLink. About the AJG The Association of Japanese Geographers (AJG), founded in 1925, is one of the largest and leading organizations on geographical research in Asia and the Pacific Rim today, with around 3000 members. AJG is devoted to promoting research on various aspects of human and physical geography and contributing to academic development through exchanges of information and knowledge with relevant internal and external academic communities. Members are tackling contemporary issues such as global warming, air/water pollution, natural disasters, rapid urbanization, irregular land-use changes, and regional disparities through comprehensive investigation into the earth and its people. In addition, to make the next generation aware of these academic achievements, the members are engaged in teaching and outreach activities of spreading geographical awareness. With the recent developments and much improved international linkages, AJG launches the publication of the AJG Library series in 2012. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10223

Akiko Ikeguchi · Takafumi Yokoyama · Seishiro Sakita Editors

Adaptive Fisheries Governance in Changing Coastal Regions in Japan

Editors Akiko Ikeguchi College of Education Yokohama National University Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan

Takafumi Yokoyama Department of Geography Rissho University Kumagaya, Saitama, Japan

Seishiro Sakita National Museum of Ethnology Suita, Osaka, Japan

ISSN 2197-7798 ISSN 2197-7801 (electronic) International Perspectives in Geography ISBN 978-981-33-4239-2 ISBN 978-981-33-4240-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4240-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Preface

Japan’s fisheries sector is undergoing a major restructuring. In line with the Basic Fisheries Plan announced in April 2017, the Fisheries Agency reformed the national fisheries policy in June 2018. The six items included in the plan are: 1. Promotion of new resource management schemes that meet international standards, especially the program based on scientific methods; 2. Restructuring the marketing policy to benefit producers; 3. Reviewing the fishery licensing system to improve productivity; 4. Examining the sea surface use system, including the evaluation of the priority of user organizations; 5. Assessing the Fisheries Cooperative Association (FCA), especially its role in marketing; and 6. Enhancing the multi-function of fishing villages. The context to these agenda was a general trend of fisheries resources decline and demographic changes in fishing villages in Japan. One of the critical factors for the resource decline includes coastal environmental change. Climate change and natural disasters have an enormous impact on nationwide fishing practices. Generally, fishers learn about environmental changes during their everyday fishing activity and this ecological knowledge is passed on from one generation to another. In response to environmental changes, they are required to share the knowledge with various stakeholders and take appropriate actions. Aging and a declining population are not confined to fishing villages but are prevalent in most rural areas in Japan. Administrative reform and budget reductions have been introduced with different time-spatial scales by the regions. Under the national policy of decentralization, the availability of local infrastructure, both physical and social, plays a significant role in the adaptive capacity of the community. Conventionally, legal entities in resource management in Japan are the FCA, Area Fisheries Coordinating Committee (AFCC) at different administrative scales, the Fisheries Policy Council, and the state-owned fisheries research institutes. Their organizational structure is system-type, meaning they work for the sole objective of resource management or conflict solution. Meanwhile, if not legally denoted, there are stakeholders often involved in decision-making over resource/sea surface use, that is, fishing communities, fisher’s groups, marketing entities, consumers, and, recently, NPO and grassroots citizen groups. They have worked in different contexts but in a loosely organized in network structure to influence resource/sea surface use. The latter type of institutions, characterized as “governance,” receive additional v

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attention in order to cope with the changing socio-physical environment under the decentralization policy. In the study of common property resources, Japanese coastal fisheries are considered as good examples of community-based, self-organized institutions for resource management. With Territorial Use Rights for Fisheries (TURF) legally entitled with FCA, fishers comply with rules they crafted, and sanctions are provided with close social ties in the community. On the other hand, the “traditional” or “closed” image of the community often drew criticism that once it was incorporated into the global market economy or faced climate change, the community no longer functions for the commons. However, Japanese historians and geographers found that the village had long been associated with the market, both domestic and international, and that the association created regional differences in social organizations and resource use. There are dynamic interactions between stakeholders at different levels, which need to be highlighted in order to present a new image of the community and identify local adaptive capacity. This book is a proceeding of a symposium titled “Changing Coastal Fishing Grounds and Adaptive Environmental Governance” held during the conference of the Association of Japanese Geographers on March 21, 2019, at Senshu University, Tokyo. The symposium presented outcomes of the four-year research project the “Geographical Study of Adaptive Environmental Governance in the Coastal Fishing Grounds,” funded by JSPS 16H03519, 2016–2019. As part of this project, we jointly conducted field research and workshops at various locations, from Hokkaido to Kyushu, to discuss the viewpoints and methodology to describe the dynamics of local adaptations to environmental changes, regional basis to those actions, and the political context that we should consider. In the chapters in Part I the readers will find the political background of recent governance studies in Japan, a methodology developed to describe networks in governance, the reality of FCA consolidation in the last half-century. Based on these contexts, Part II presents case studies of adaptive governance; in the emergence of local scientific knowledge to cope with oligotrophication, in the fishing industry facing the dynamic shift of herring resources, in fisher networks in response to the tsunami, and the development of new governance in response to seaweed deforestation. We hope this book will form the basis of future discussions with international scholars to identify a research framework for comparative studies. We would like to thank our colleagues who participated in the symposium— Midori Kawabe at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, Satoshi Imazato at Kyushu University, Ken-ichi Nonaka at Rikkyo University, and Kiyomi Hayashi at Kanazawa University. We are also grateful to Xavier Basurto, Mateja Nenadovic, and their team at Duke University, U.S.A., for their inspiration and encouragement for this publication.

Preface

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. Yokohama, Japan

Akiko Ikeguchi Takafumi Yokoyama Seishiro Sakita

Contents

Context and Framework Changing Community Governance in the Coastal Fishing Regions . . . . . Yosuke Maeda

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Examining Geographical Methods for Analyzing Relationships Among Actors in Fishing Ground Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kunimitsu Yoshida

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Rethinking the State of Fisheries Cooperative Associations Through the Long-Term Consolidation Movement in Japan . . . . . . . . . . . Seishiro Sakita and Ayumu Matsui

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Case Studies of Adaptive Fisheries Governance Fisheries Resource Governance in Hyogo Seto Inland Sea: Fishers, the Government, Research Institutes, and Fishers’ Organizations . . . . . . Masataka Tawa

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Fishery Activities in Response to the Rapid Decline of the Herring Catch in Hokkaido . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ayumi Hattori

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Adaptive Capacity in Fishery Restoration Process at Tsunami-Affected Areas: Assets, Flexibility, and Social Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Takafumi Yokoyama Adaptive Governance of Coastal Fisheries Resources in Response to Isoyake (Seaweed Deforestation) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Akiko Ikeguchi Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 ix

List of Contributors

Ayumi Hattori Department of Japanese History and Culture, Aichi Prefectural University, Nagakute, Japan Akiko Ikeguchi College of Education, Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan Yosuke Maeda Faculty of Education, Niigata University, Niigata, Japan Ayumu Matsui Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hirosaki University, Hirosaki, Japan Seishiro Sakita National Museum of Ethnology, Suita, Japan Masataka Tawa School of Humanities, Kwansei Gakuin University, Nishinomiya, Japan Takafumi Yokoyama Department of Geography, Faculty of Geo-Environmental Sciences, Rissho University, Kumagaya, Japan Kunimitsu Yoshida Faculty of Education, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan

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List of Abbreviations

ASC COD CPR CPUE DIN FAO FCA(s) FY GIS HPFPF MEL MLIT MSC NPIF NPO(s) OBE RIFA SEK SNA TEK TURF

Aquaculture Stewardship Council Chemical Oxygen Demand Common-Pool Resource Catch Per Unit Effort Dissolved Inorganic Nitrogen Food and Agriculture Organization Fisheries Cooperative Association(s) Financial Year Geographic Information System Hyogo Prefecture Fisheries Promotion Foundation Marine Eco-Label Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Marine Stewardship Council Nagasaki Prefectural Institute of Fisheries Non-Profit Organization(s) Out-Board Engine Remote Island Fishery Aid Scientific Ecological Knowledge Social Network Analysis Traditional Ecological Knowledge Territorial Use Rights for Fisheries

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Context and Framework

Changing Community Governance in the Coastal Fishing Regions Yosuke Maeda

Abstract Communities exist despite changing social and environmental conditions. Several communities can sustain their function, governance, and symbol, whereas others are unable to adapt to changes. This study aims to examine how contemporary communities adapt to social, political, and environmental changes with a case study of Uku Island in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, as a coastal fishing region. A particular emphasis is placed on governance of communities. From the case study’s result, even within these changes, the communities centered on longstanding residents’ associations maintain their function and take a key role in governance in the island, while a different form of governance has also emerged. This can be regarded as a process of adaptation to changes. However, amid progressing administrative reforms like the consolidation of municipalities, communities and governance in the island will seemingly have to face external changes more directly because of their inability to publicly resolve major issues beyond each community or at the island level. Keywords Community · Governance · Coastal fishing region · Uku Island

1 Introduction Communities or neighborhoods have gained the attention of policymakers, planners, and scholars amid the ongoing administrative and fiscal reforms triggered by the so-called crisis of a welfare state. In this trend, several commentators emphasized the role of communities because of ethical or moral values, whereas others directed a skeptical look at the utilization of communities by governments (DeFilippis et al. 2006). Community is a word with multiple meanings. For example, Hillary (1955) found 94 definitions of community. In such definitions, Hillary (1955: 118) pointed out that many of them mentioned “area” and “social interaction.” This study also focuses on Y. Maeda (B) Faculty of Education, Niigata University, Niigata, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Ikeguchi et al. (eds.), Adaptive Fisheries Governance in Changing Coastal Regions in Japan, International Perspectives in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4240-8_1

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community as a local community, which pertains to relatively small geographical areas, such as neighborhoods, towns, and villages, with social interaction. Communities vary according to internal and external factors or environments rather than maintain their stability. The previous literatures showed that demographical changes and government policies are the main social factors influencing communities. In addition, natural environmental changes have an effect on communities, especially in rural areas. Researchers in the social and human sciences have discussed changes in communities, including geographers, for a long time. Reviewing the early literature, many scholars have been interested in the changing mode of communities under progressing modernization and urbanization and through government policies. One of the most prominent examples is Tönnies’ (1887) discussion about the transition of Gemeinschaft (community) to Gesellschaft (society). Although Tönnies (1887) views Gemeinschaft as social unit in which an individual is included in the common will, Gesellschaft is understood as social unit based on individual will. In addition, he points out that the mode of social unit has historically moved from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft. Focusing on Japan, the government’s community policies provoked discussions about changes in communities that occurred in the 1970s. The Japanese government (Keizaikikaku-cho Kokumin-seikatsu-kyoku [The Research Committee of the Qualityof-Life Policy Council]) presented a report about community entitled “Community: Recovery of humanity in community life” (Keizaikikaku-cho Kokumin-seikatsukyoku 1969). Under the progress of economic development and modernization of lifestyle at the time, the report pointed out the necessity of the community based on relatively independent and responsible individuals than the former lifestyle and family system in rural areas. Later, as Japan experienced the development of the volunteer sector, especially in the fields of welfare, environmental issues, and disaster prevention, scholars again identified the changing nature of the community. One of main reasons of it has been understood as individualization of the modes of organizations, families, and local communities (Takegawa 2004). In particular, discussion on the relationship among urban issues, government policies, and the communities is extensive. Contemporary metropolitan cities in Japan, such as Tokyo and Osaka, have recovered their population in the central and inner areas. The growing number of supra-high-rise apartment buildings in the central and inner areas is an icon of such growth (Sorensen et al. 2010). Thus, the changing nature of the communities as signified by new apartment buildings has been revealed (Ajisaka et al. 2013a, b, 2015). In the UK, since the New Labour administration, communities especially in urban areas have become the main policy target as indicated by well-known policies and slogans, such as the New Deal for Communities and Big Society (MacLeavy 2008). Communities have changed not only in urban areas but also in rural areas. In recent Japan, many researchers raised questions about the sustainability of rural communities under a shrinking and aging population (Feldhoff 2013). Moreover, communities have been expected to play a role in regional development under severe social, economic, and demographic circumstances. Rural communities in western

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societies have also faced demographic and social problems and are in the process of change (Skinner and Hanlon 2016). Disregarding whether or not communities are located in urban or rural areas, social and economic circumstances determine the gradual or rapid changes in the nature of communities. As previously mentioned, communities have been frequently viewed as a tool of governments for solving social problems. Moreover, Foucauldian analysis reveals that communities have become subject to tackling local issues independently (Rose 1999). Indeed, the local governments have encouraged devolving power to communities to cultivate their capability to manage local areas in Japan, whereas the governments’ fiscal base has been weakened. Notably, communities exist despite changing social and environmental conditions. Several communities can sustain their function, governance, and symbol, whereas others are unable to adapt to changes. To address this phenomenon, this study aims to examine how cotemporary communities adapt to social, political, and environmental changes with a case study of Uku Island in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, as a coastal fishing region. A particular focus is placed on governance of communities. The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 provides an overview of Japan’s government structure and recent administrative reforms and focuses on points related to the communities with reference to public governance theory. Section 3 highlights the status of the Japanese communities, especially its governance, with the progress in administrative reforms and demographical change. Section 4 presents the case of Uku Island, which is a remote island in the Nagasaki Prefecture in Japan, and sets the case as an example to elucidate the types of changes that occurred in the community (governance) in the coastal fishing region. Section 5 summarizes the discussion up to the previous section. The contents of Sect. 4 are derived mainly from data collected from field work conducted in Uku Island from March 8 to 11, 2019.

2 Administrative and Financial Reforms in Japan 2.1 Government System and Administrative Reforms in Japan Contemporary Japanese local and central governments consist of three layers of governments (Fig. 1). The central government is at the highest level with 47 regional governments at the middle level. A total of 1,741 local governments comprise the lowest level as of 2019. The local governments consist of cities, wards, towns, and villages, which are basically defined by the size of the population and which have different authorities. Everywhere in the country is covered by one local, one prefectural, and one central government similar to a nested structure. Apart from the central governments, the local and prefectural governments are led by a mayor and a governor, respectively, with elected councilors.

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Fig. 1 Layers of governments in Japan

The relationship between local communities and the vertical structure of governments should be discussed in light of the governance of local communities in Japan. The chonai-kai, jichi-kai, or buraku-kai, which is a residents’ or neighborhood association, is one of the most influential actors at the neighborhood level. Torigoe (1994) cited that the main characteristics of the residents’ association in Japan are as follows. (1) An area hosts one residents’ association. (2) Memberships are based not on the individual level but on the household level. (3) All households in the area are expected to be members. (4) The association is an umbrella or sub-organization of other territorial groups, such as crime prevention group, club for the elderly, or fire volunteer group in the area. Lastly, (5) the association often functions as a terminal organization of the local government. In general, residents’ association plays various roles in local issues, such as holding local festivals, cleaning the streets, and providing small-scale social services in close association with the local government. Moreover, rural areas especially manage local common resources, such as village forests, wild vegetable patches, and coastal aquatic resources. Given these characteristics, such as territorial representativeness, inclusiveness, and area management, this study views the residents’ association as a non-formal government organization or governmental body at the neighborhood level, as shown in Fig. 1. However, the close relationship between the local government and residents’ association has been controversial (Haddad 2010; Maeda 2012). The high economic growth and attempts to construct a welfare state after World War II were conducted under the abovementioned government structure. Especially,

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the central government had a powerful leadership with political communities and business leaders for various planning modes, such as industrial and regional planning. However, similar to other industrialized capitalist countries, the Japanese economy and society faced the crisis of Fordism (see Goodwin and Painter 1996). As such, administrative reform has been discussed with various reforms, such as political and welfare reforms, since the 1980s. Recently, administrative reforms under the Koizumi administration (2001–2006) was powerfully driven by two main directions, namely, privatization and decentralization, which were advertised using well-known slogans “kan-kara-min-e (from public to private)” and “chuo-kara-chiho-e (from central to local). For example, the Postal Service Privatization Act was passed in 2005 with political struggle not only within Houses but also between and within a ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party, administrations, and business leaders (Maclachlan 2006). This study infers that the introduction of the Designated Management Entity System in 2003 was a visible example of privatization of community activities. According to the system, local public facilities, such as community centers, athletic facilities, and libraries, have come under the management by private companies, non-profit organizations, and local communities, although geographical differences were observed regarding its introduction (see Sato 2013). In parallel with privatization, decentralization also progressed in the last few decades, including the Koizumi administration. One of the most symbolic reforms is the repeal of kikan-inin-jimu (agency-delegated function) of the local government in 1999 as a part of the Omnibus Decentralization Law. In general, the functions of the Japanese local governments were divided into agency-delegated functions and dantai-inin-jimu (responsibility-entrusted functions) before 1999. Concerns arose regarding the former because it was considered “a mechanism for the central government to exploit the local governments and transform local autonomy into central control” (Kume 2001: 209). Thus, the repeal of the function indicated an increase in the autonomy of the local governments (Aldrich 1999; Kume 2001). This study points out another symbolic reform in terms of decentralization, that is, the consolidation of municipalities. With the encouragement of the central government, the consolidation progressed across the country to rationalize public services in the 2000s. As a result, the number of municipalities, such as cities, wards, towns, and villages, has decreased from 3,255 in 2001 to 1,741 in 2015. Local governments have been expected to play an independent role in current local issues, although whether or not they have become increasingly independent and autonomous is subject to another discussion.

2.2 Public Governance and Administrative Reforms in Japan During the reforms of welfare states in many western capitalist countries, social scientists have captured the characteristics of such a transformation using well-known phrases, such as a “shift from government to governance.” In the discussion, the

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horizontal network of diverse actors has become responsible for public issues in which the government has traditionally played a central role. Previous studies have pointed out that various actors were previously involved in public issues, but the role of horizontal networks between actors has been suggested since approximately the 1990s (Sørensen and Torfing 2007: 3). Such a horizontal network came to be known as governance. In the 1990s and 2000s, many researchers, including geographers, investigated changes in terms of tackling public issues and their backgrounds. Among these researchers, geographers particularly focused on the relationship between changes and political economic shift, which is referred to as regulation theory (see Hubbard et al. 2002). “Second-generation governance research” is gradually sought out due to the acceptance of such changes. For example, Sørensen and Torfing (2007: 14–16) posed the following questions as research subjects of second-generation research: (1) What is the organization and development of the governance network?; (2) What is the background of the success and failure of the governance network?; (3) How is governance network maintained and coordinated (i.e., meta-governance or network management)?; and (4) What are the problems and possibilities of the governance network in terms of democracy and legitimacy issues? As previously discussed, administrative reforms in Japan have also been understood as “government to governance.” Indeed, many Japanese researchers have discussed public governance theory, and policy makers used the notion of governance as tackling public issues by horizontal networks between various actors and coined the term atarashii-kokyo (new public). Compared with North and Western Europe, studies on second generation approaches are lacking. To address this research gap, therefore, researchers should view the characteristics of the governance network after reforms and focus not only the horizontal but also the vertical network, thus elucidating the characteristics of Japanese communities. Another angle to examine is the changing manner of tackling issues at the community level, especially in terms of public governance in Japan. As previously noted, the residents’ association, as one of main actors of the local community, often functions as a terminal organization of the local government. With the progress of the administrative and fiscal reforms, the means in which communities are managed is also changing. For example, actors other than the residents’ association have also emerged. Another example is that the communities currently plays a large role as symbolized by the movement of “the institutionalization of the community” (Nawata 2009), such that several cases are viewed as devolving power to communities. These movements, especially in relation to the diversification of actors, can be understood as “from government to governance” at the community level (Takegawa 2004). Furthermore, one can assume that the means of governing or governance at the community level is changing.

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3 Community Governance in Transition This section examines the changes occurring in Japan’s communities in detail, especially about community governance. First, this study points out that the residents’ association in Japan is likely based on the patriarchy or old-fashoned gender roles. Such characteristics of the residents’ association were the subject of controversy among researchers. Although many researchers criticized its old-fashioned nature and argued the necessity for the modernization of communities, other scholars pointed out that the manner of management and governance of the community should not be understood as undemocratic, but rather as part of the culture of the country. Afterward, based on the development of such a discussion, including Iwasaki’s (1989: 10) definition of the residents’ association as a jyu-en (living-ties) association, which is based on ties spun through daily life, empirical and theoretical research continues to capture the functions and roles of such associations. This study infers that the residents’ association remains the main actor of the local communities in Japan. However, their characteristics and positions in the communities have changed. For example, Haddad (2010) found democratization and liberalization of the organization’s characteristics. In addition, Iwasaki et al. (2013) reviewed a comprehensive book (Iwasaki et al. 1989) about the residents’ association and pointed out the weakening of the residents’ associations because of the aging of society, which were covered as case studies in Iwasaki et al. (1989). Moreover, as discussed in the Introduction, the development of the new local actor in Japan should be realized. In general, local voluntary activities and sectors have been developed since the 1970s, especially at the sub-urban areas of the metropolitan areas in Japan. One of main driving forces of the development was the housewives under the gender division of labor. The suburban areas were less influenced by the traditional community based on the residents’ association, and women independently cultivated communities external to the residents’ association (Kageyama 1998). Retired males were then expected to be new actors of the voluntary sector because they spent much time at working places in urban centers and thus were not rooted in longstanding communities, although socializing in local communities was not easy for them (Kimura 2006). Although we can see that the sub-urban areas enjoy the development of the voluntary sector, voluntary activities and organizations have gained immense popularity and are now largely accepted across the country in the last few decades. One of main triggers of this acceptance is volunteer work during disasters, e.g., the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995 and the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. Many individuals carried out volunteer work at affected areas or their communities by caring for sufferers, cleaning streets and houses, holding social events, collecting and sending goods, implementing educational activities, etc. Their activities have been sophisticated, organized, and gradually networked (Maeda 2012). Moreover, the Act to Promote Specified Nonprofit Activities (NPO Act) has been established in 1998. By the law, obtaining corporate status and developing a business enterprise have become easy for voluntary and community groups. The number of NPOs is

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more than 50,000 as of 2018. Voluntary actions spread not only in urban but also in rural areas in contemporary Japan. In summary, the residents’ association continues to play the main role in community activities, although they are vulnerable. However, that various actors, including the voluntary sector, have become involved in the activities should be recognized. Therefore, noting the geographical differences in the characteristics and activities of residents’ associations and the voluntary sector is important. To reiterate, this study focuses on community governance. As previously discussed, the residents’ association is deemed as a semi-government body with ambiguous relationships with the local governments. Hidaka (2015: 6) explained this relationship as follows. Local government and residents’ association construct unique institution of community governance that should be called ‘community collaboration system.’ It is thought that they have formed and maintained an interdependence relationship based on exchange and mobilization of administrative resources and social resources in order to guarantee the citizen participation in administration at small area, and to provide the public service specific to that area. (Translated from Japanese by the author)

In other words, the residents’ association can be considered as the main actor of community governance in the long run, and this governance is based on a vague relationship between the government and the residents’ association. However, such a longstanding community governance based on the relationship has changed. If this study focuses on the diversification of actors at the community level, then understanding the recent change as “from government to governance” at the community level can be reached (Takegawa 2004). Additionally, paying attention to the occurrence of a phenomenon called institutionalization (Nawata 2009) or formalization of the community in terms of community governance is also necessary. In recent years, various political and social expectations for the role of communities have emerged. Institutionalizing the community, designating a public role to the community, or devolving power to the community, is understood to be a part of this trend. These movements can be spread across the country in various ways. For example, the local governments established a new local or community organization in a wider geographical area than the area for the residents’ association to activate its specific functions. Several cases, such as establishing a local organization or platform to discuss and manage local issues based on public grants, have also emerged. In this manner, the movement to give public roles to the community is also evident in urban and rural areas. Various backgrounds of institutionalization of the community have been recognized, but one of the main factors is the recent consolidation of municipalities. As a result of the consolidation, the geographical area and size of the municipalities have increased. Indeed, the area of some cities is larger than 1,000 km2 . Therefore, the distance between the local governments and residents has become wider from the geographical and cognitive aspects. In parallel with the consolidation, the central government introduced legal frameworks to establish organizations or platforms in

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2004 because central government realized this problem. Interestingly, many municipalities introduced these local organizations or platforms based on codes or rules outside of the Act (Maeda 2020). According to a survey on all municipalities in Japan (n = 1,741) in 2015 (Maeda 2020: 94), 38.8% of the local governments (n = 908) introduced (semi-formal) community governance institutions. And the research suggests that the local governments, which hold large populations, have experienced the consolidation of municipalities, and are located in non-metropolitan areas, have undergone a relatively high percentage of introduction of community governance institutions, as shown in Fig. 2. In contemporary Japan, the community has become sustained by more variety of actors on the one hand and has become institutionalized on the other hand. The social and political environment has changed the community. Moreover, focusing on Japan, we can see a more complicated condition in terms of the community or community governance. Originally intending to strengthen the financial base of the local governments, the consolidations are progressing in non-metropolitan areas, such as rural areas, rather than metropolitan areas, and the rural areas are more affected by such consolidations. In general, as a result of the consolidation, rural and mountain villages have become a part of the city and town located at the center of

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Municipality which has intra-municipality decentralisation system Municipality which has the system like intra-municipality decentralisation system Municipality which doesn’t have intra-municipality decentralisation system Other Municipality which experienced the consolidation of municipalities Municipality which didn’t experienced the consolidation of municipalities

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Fig. 2 Development of intra-municipality decentralisation systems in Japan (Source Modified from Maeda 2020: 95)

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the region and have been governed from a more distantly located local government. Therefore, this study infers that marginalization has progressed. Considering that the institutionalization of the community has advanced in such a situation is necessary. Comparing the actors in the community compared with urban areas, the long-standing residents’ association based on the patriarchal system continue to lead in terms of governance, culture, and welfare at the community level, though the foundations of such culture are becoming lost due to aging and population decline. Additionally, Den-en Kaiki (returning to rural) is attracting attention and efforts by migrants from urban areas are growing in many areas, albeit gradual. Moreover, the strong relationship between the community and the primary industry should be considered especially at rural area. For example, climate variation can cause severe economic damages in agricultural areas. In certain cases, the community conserves the surrounding natural environment and manages the natural common goods, such as wild vegetable and coastal aquatic resources. These communities frequently embed this relationship with the environment in daily living in the form of festivals and annual events. To reiterate, communities is said to be changing in a complex manner along with conditions, such as politics, society, and natural environment. Moreover, the problems related to the changing nature of these communities are expressed in various forms dependent on the area. In the following section, we will consider a case study of a remote island, Uku Island, in Sasebo City, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, to analyze how communities, especially their governance as a way of managing or steering communities, are changing in a coastal fishing region. In general, coastal fishing regions are located in rural or marginal areas. Uku Island can be seen as such area. This island has experienced the consolidation of municipalities and the institutionalization of communities mentioned above, as well as issues related to rural or marginal areas such as population issues. Therefore, the island can be considered a good example of exposing communities at coastal fishing regions under current social and political changes.

4 Case Study This section first provides an overview of Uku Island, which is a remote island located about 50 km west from the north of Kyushu Island (Fig. 3). The area spans 26.38 km2 with a population of approximately 2,000 as of 2015. Focusing on demographical structure, as shown in Fig. 4, the population has been steadily decreasing since 1955. The island can be characterized as a region where population declines are remarkable. In addition, as shown in the population pyramid in Fig. 5, the aging of the population is progressing because of an outflow of the population. Uku Island can be characterized as a coastal fishing region. The main industry of the island is the primary industry, especially agriculture including livestock and fishery. In the past, the coasts were rich in resources such as seaweeds and shellfish that lived around the island, and collections by fishers and communities were also

Changing Community Governance …

Fig. 3 Location of Uku Island

Fig. 4 Population from 1950 to 2015 in Uku Island (Source The Population Census in Japan)

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Fig. 5 Population pyramids of Uku Island in 1985 and 2015 (Source The Population Census in Japan)

thriving. However, such resources have been depleted. The shortage of successors, including fisheries, has become a major issue as the population ages and declines. Since the merger of Taira Machi (Town) and Kohnoura Mura (Village) in 1889 and the establishment of the Uku Town, Uku Island has long been governed by the elected mayor and councilors of the town. However, under the recent promotion of consolidation of municipalities and serious financial situation, Uku Town decided to merge with Sasebo City, which is a big city in the mainland (Fig. 3). As a result, Uku Island became a part of Sasebo City from 2006, and the functions of the council and government office were eliminated from the island. Instead, the Uku Gyosei Sentaa (Uku Administration Center), which is the branch office of Sasebo City, has been established. Within the same period, a similar-size neighbor island, namely, Ojika Island (area: 12.22 km2 , pop: approximately 2,200 as of 2015) also discussed a merger with Sasebo City. However, the island did not merge and opted to remain an island with a single independent local government. In terms of communities, those in Uku are mainly supported by the long-standing residents’ associations. There are a total of 27 residents’ associations in Uku Island mainly for each settlement or village. Small ones consist of several households, whereas large ones consist of more than 100 households. The residents’ associations are the main actors in each community as terminal organizations of the local government, as main actors of governance, as actors of managing local commons, and as leaders of the local culture, such as festivals. However, the patriarchal system also remains. For example, although chairpersons of each residents’ association are generally and annually rotated in each association, only the full members of the association can serve as president in many cases. This practice means that a single member1 should become a “normal family,” such as living as a couple. In certain cases, a single member is not recognized as a full member. In addition, residents point out that the codes of community are severe. For example, in case of Settlement A, 1 In

Uku Island, residents’ associations generally have allowed older people to be exempted from some positions.

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members of the fire volunteer group are rotated by the full members of the residents’ association, and households have to pay a penalty charge if they are not full members in turn (field work on March 11, 2019). In Uku Island, the strength of the residents’ associations becomes easy to understand by considering the festival. Uku Island can be roughly divided into two districts, namely, the Taira-machi and Kohnoura-mura. The Taira-machi district is the area where the Goto han (local government) ruled in the early modern period. For example, Settlement B in the Taira-machi district takes leadership of many local festivals, such as the Nobiru (Allium macrostemon) festival, Hijiki (Hizikia fusiformis) festival, and the New Year’s Eve Night festival at the local Tenman-gu Shrine, and supports community-level festivals, such as the ritual of Horikawa Kannon Temple, in addition to supporting festivals such as the Gion festival and the annual festival at the district level shrine. Notably, the residents’ associations continue to support the various levels of festivals, whereas the communities often point out that maintaining the rituals and festivals is difficult. This study observes the same scenario in the Kohnouramura district where the Tomie han ruled in the early modern period. For example, Settlement C in the Kohnoura-mura district is responsible for festivals, such as the district-wide annual festival of the Uku Shrine. Furthermore, it supports festivals, such as the Hiyohiyo (Ryujin [god of dragon] festival) at Itsukushima Shrine, which is a shrine at the community level. Interestingly, a few of these festivals are linked to the surrounding environment. Especially, festivals, such as the Nobiru and Hijiki festivals are dedicated to local vegetables and seaweeds that can be taken from the mountains and seashores, respectively, of the communities. In addition, Hiyohiyo is a fisherman’s festival that takes place at sea. The communities of this island have aspects that can be told with regard to the surrounding natural environment. However, the residents’ associations of Uku Island are weakening due to population decline and aging as previously mentioned. As a result, the number of members of the residents’ association has been reduced, and the frequency of rotation of positions has increased. In other words, maintaining a few residents’ associations is becoming difficult. Moreover, the residents’ associations’ method of community management has been affected by changes in the surrounding environment. For example, Settlement D earned approximately 1.5 million yen a year by collecting Hijiki at common seashores of the settlement around 1980, which was used for the operation of the residents’ association (field work on March 11, 2019). However, Hijiki can no longer be picked because of the decreasing or disappearing upright seaweed beds (Isoyake, see Chapter “Adaptive Governance of Coastal Fisheries Resources in Response to Isoyake (Seaweed Deforestation)” for more detail). Therefore, the association has collected membership fees from the community. In the settlement, the residents’ association was responsible for managing local commons, such as land, forest, and seashore, not only for the association but also for the livelihood of the households. The residents’ association divided the coast into 50 areas and assigned ownership rights to each household by bidding. In the meantime, communities (governance) in Uku Island has been affected by the recent consolidation of the municipalities and introduction of the institutionalization

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of the community. Uku Island has been a part of Sasebo City in 2006. Since then, the relationship between the local government and residents’ associations has changed. To date, the residents’ associations are functioning as a terminal organization of the local government. In the past, however, the Uku Town officials, council members (10 members), and the mayor of the town were also residents of one of the communities in the island. Therefore, the government and residents’ associations constructed a literal face-to-face relationship. In such a relationship, problems that could not be solved at the community level may be examined at the town level directly or via council members as per request. Currently, a branch office from Sasebo City has been set up on the island, such that a certain level of face-to-face relationship is maintained. However, regarding problems that cannot be handled at the branch office or require city-level decision-making, consultation with the Sasebo City Office at Kyushu mainland is needed. Each residents’ association also functions as a terminal organization of the office, although a face-to-face relationship is lacking. Furthermore, although many former town office staff are assigned at the branch office, in the future, more Sasebo City staff, who have not been based in the Uku Island are expected to be assigned at the office. Sasebo City was merged with five other towns between 2005 and 2010. In parallel with this movement, preparations for institutionalization of the community were discussed, and the chiku-jichi-kyogikai (district self-governing council) system has been introduced in 2014. The system is based on the ordinance of the city. A total of 27 councils were established across the city, and one council was established on Uku Island in 2017. The city illustrates the general structure of the council. According to the ordinance, the general committee under the board of directors consists of subcommittees, e.g., crime and disaster prevention, lifelong learning, and women subcommittees. The general committee is composed of representatives of the residents’ associations in the district, various community groups, and representatives of the subcommittees. In addition, subcommittees are typically composed of the existing related community groups. Each council is allocated personnel costs for the secretary general and staffs. Sasebo City has listed the following points for the purpose of establishing the council: (1) maintenance, reconstruction, or formation of the local communities; (2) solving community issues; and (3) activating communities (Sasebo City Website; July 30, 2019, translated from Japanese by the author). In Uku Island, although the people involved expect to discuss or tackle inter-island issues, individuals pointed out the lack of power, such as the former town government, and expressed concern about the non-bottom-up organization from the community but the top-down one from Sasebo City (field work on March 9, 2019). As a result, the relationship between the new institution and communities is deemed to be weak. Finally, this study mentions the emergence of new actors of the communities around the island communities. The first is the launch of a new youth association by some residents of the island. This youth association, which consists of residents from four settlements, is concerned about the future of the island and has initiated the development or re-cultivation of the communities. In addition, individuals outside the island have started new small initiatives and activities on the island by moving to the island through a program encouraging the growth of rural areas through immigration

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from urban areas. These new movements around the actors also have the potential to change the communities in the future.

5 Conclusion The paper elucidates the situation of communities, especially community governance, under the changing social, political and environmental conditions through the case of Uku Island. Even within these changes, the communities centered on longstanding residents’ associations maintain to function and take a key role in governances in the island, while a different form of governance has also emerged. This can be regarded as a process of adaptation to changes. New form of governance surrounding communities is summarized as follows. The situation in Uku Island indicates that the changes in the communities of the island is not only a problem of the island, but a part of the reorganization of the traditional Japanese government structure. First, the vertical government structure of the “central government, prefectural govrenment, local governments, and communities” can be considered in transition. Increasing the size of local governments with the merger is a plausible option. However, such an initiative seems to increase the distance between local governments and communities, particularly in Uku Island, and capturing issues at the community level has become difficult for local governments. To fill this gap, many local governments introduced the “institutionalization of communities;” however, the system is not embedded in the culture and governance at the community level on the island so far. Figure 6 shows the changing vertical structures of the government over the island, where the terminal part of the government structure has become complicated. Another effect of reorganization is the possibility of further marginalization of rural or marginal areas. As mentioned previously, the merger of municipalities may have been considered an effective method to maintain administrative services for local governments in marginal areas where the financial base is weak. However, the ability to make decisions on local- or island-level issues is important for these areas to manage their economy and society in addition to the maintenance of service levels. The weakening of local- or island-level decision-making function is considered to have a great effect, especially on remote islands and marginal areas such as Uku Island. In the case of Uku, residents’ associations remain relatively in charge of the communities and maintain close ties with the society, despite the development of new actors. In the past, island-level issues were decided in former Uku Town, and the residents’ associations had close ties to the town. However, there is currently no government and no place to make public decisions at the island level. Therefore, in the future, communities and governance in the island might have to accept external changes more directly owing to their inability to publicly resolve major issues beyond each community or at the island level. Given that many coastal fishing regions are located in rural or marginal areas including remote islands, this is an important perspective for analyzing communities in these regions.

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Fig. 6 Structures of local governments and communities over Uku Island

References Ajisaka M, Maruyama M, Ueno J et al (2015) Urban core revival and local community in Nagoya City: a focus on condominium residents in Naka Ward. Soc Sci Rev 113:1–106 (in Japanese with English abstract) Ajisaka M, Ueno J, Tsutsumi K et al (2013a) Local community and condominium residents in the era of urban core revival: comparative research in Sapporo, Fukuoka, and Nagoya (2). Soc Sci Rev 106:1–69 (in Japanese with English abstract) Ajisaka M, Ueno J, Tsutsumi K et al (2013b) Local community and condominium residents in the era of urban core revival: Comparative research in Sapporo, Fukuoka, and Nagoya (1). Soc Sci Rev 105:1–78 (in Japanese with English abstract) Aldrich DP (1999) Localities that can say no? Autonomy and dependence in Japanese local government. Asian J Polit Sci 7(1):60–76 DeFilippis J, Fisher R, Shragge E (2006) Neither romance nor regulation: re-evaluating community. Int J Urban Reg Res 30(3):673–689 Feldhoff T (2013) Shrinking communities in Japan: Community ownership of assets as a development potential for rural Japan? Urban Des Int 18(1):99–109 Goodwin M, Painter J (1996) Local governance, the crises of Fordism and the changing geographies of regulation. Trans Inst Br Geogr 21(4):635–648 Haddad MA (2010) From undemocratic to democratic civil society: Japan’s volunteer fire departments. J Asian Stud 69(1):33–56 Hidaka A (2015) An empirical research on the neighborhood involvement system in local administration: as a collaborative institution between local government and neighborhood associations. Yamanashigakuin Law Rev 76:1–64 (in Japanese)

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Hubbard P, Kitchin R, Bartley B et al (eds) (2002) Thinking geographically: space, theory and contemporary human geography. Continuum, London Hillery G (1955) Definitions of community: areas of agreement. Rural Sociology 20(2):111–123 Iwasaki N (1989) How to capture neighborhood association. In: Iwasaki N, Ajisaka M, Ueda U et al (eds) Study on neighborhood association. Ochanomizu Shobo, Tokyo, pp 1–32 (in Japanese) Iwasaki N, Ajisaka M, Ueda T et al (eds) (2013) Study on neighborhood association, Expanded edn. Ochanomizu Shobo, Tokyo (in Japanese) Iwasaki N, Ajisaka M, Ueda T et al (eds) (1989) Study on neighborhood association. Ochanomizu Shobo, Tokyo (in Japanese) Kageyama H (1998) Community building from the view of gender studies in Kohoku New Town, Kanagawa. Geogr Rev Jpn 71(9):639–660 (in Japanese with English abstract) Keizaikikaku-cho Kokumin-seikatsu-kyoku (1969) Community–recovery of humanity in community life. The Research Committee of the Quality-of-Life Policy Council, Tokyo (in Japanese) Kimura O (2006) Male retiree’s involvement process in community activities in a suburban community: Case study of Sakuragaoka, Tama City, Tokyo. Geogr Rev Jpn 79(3):111–123 (in Japanese with English abstract) Kume I (2001) The impact of agency delegated functions: a Japanese case study. World Bank Institute Working Paper No. 37176 Maclachlan PL (2006) Storming the castle: the battle for postal reform in Japan. Soc Sci Jpn J 9(1):1–18 MacLeavy J (2008) Managing diversity? ‘Community cohesion’ and its limits in neoliberal urban policy. Geogr Compass 2(2):538–558 Maeda Y (2012) Creating a diversified community: community safety activity in Musashino City. Japan. Geoforum 43(2):342–352 Maeda Y (2020) Development of the intra-municipality decentralisation system in Japan. In: Silva CN (ed) Contemporary trends in local governance: reform, cooperation and citizen participation. Springer, Cham, pp 87-109 Nawata Y (2009) Institutionalization of community and its typology in recent Japan. In: Nawata Y (ed) Autonomy of community: International comparison of intra-municipality decentralization and collaboration. Nippon Hyoronsha, Tokyo, pp 15–43 (in Japanese) Rose N (1999) Powers of freedom: reframing political thought. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Sato M (2013) Regional differences and contributing factors in introducing a designated administrator system. Plan Public Manag 36(2):39–48 (in Japanese with English abstract) Skinner M, Hanlon N (eds) (2016) Ageing resource communities: new frontiers of rural population change, community development and voluntarism. Routledge, Oxford Sorensen A, Okata J, Fujii S (2010) Urban renaissance as intensification: building regulation and the rescaling of place governance in Tokyo’s high-rise manshon boom. Urban Stud 47(3):556–583 Sørensen E, Torfing J (2007) Introduction: governance network research: towards a second generation. In: Sørensen E, Torfing J (eds) Theories of democratic network governance. Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp 1–21 Takegawa S (2004) Welfare state and individualization. Jpn Sociol Rev 54(4):322–340 (in Japanese with English abstract) Tönnies F (1887) Gemeinschaft und gesellschaft. Fues, Leipzig. English edition: Tönnies F (1957) Community and society (ed and trans: Loomis CP). Dover Publications, New York Torigoe H (1994) Study on local self-governing association: development process of settlement, neighborhood and self-governing associations. Minerva Shobo, Kyoto (in Japanese)

Examining Geographical Methods for Analyzing Relationships Among Actors in Fishing Ground Use Kunimitsu Yoshida

Abstract Policies concerning sustainable use and the conservation of fishing grounds have been researched and addressed by policy studies experts and ecology academicians under the subject of commons studies. While geographical researches on fishing ground use are increasing in number, the discussion is not widespread. This chapter examines various issues surrounding fishery resources, including usage trends with relation to social networks, social capital, and “scale.” Frameworks were used to closely analyze relationships among actors—specifically regarding the use of fishing grounds, and an evaluation of various methodologies and trends regarding geography was conducted. Keywords Commons studies · Social capital · Social networks · Geographical scale · Fishing grounds

1 Introduction Policies concerning the sustainable use and conservation of fishing grounds1 have been addressed in a cross-disciplinary manner in the field of commons studies, with policy studies and ecology playing central roles; discussions have also been conducted on methodology and previous case studies (Ostrom 1990; Berkes 2004; Folke et al. 2005; Basurto et al. 2013). Commons studies that tackle the use and conservation of fishing grounds (hereafter “fishing ground use” is used in this sense) build on theories and concepts of human geography, such as social networks, social capital, and “scale”2 (Carlsson and Sandström 2008; Bodin and Crona 2009; Poteete 1 This

term includes the areas surrounding fishing grounds. as “scale” when used as a general term without being classified as a cartographic scale, methodological scale, or geographical scale. The definition of “scale” is based on Smith (2000).

2 Noted

K. Yoshida (B) Faculty of Education, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Ikeguchi et al. (eds.), Adaptive Fisheries Governance in Changing Coastal Regions in Japan, International Perspectives in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4240-8_2

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2012). The results of studies by geographers are frequently published in major commons studies journals (Tompkins and Adger 2004; Armitage 2008). Notable studies on the fisheries geography in Japan recognize and include works by Miyazawa (2005) and Sakita (2015, 2017). However, unlike rural geography, discussion of social networks and social capital is insufficient (Yoshida 2015; Teratoko 2016a). This study explores trends in the research of fishing ground use and examines how they demonstrate originality in research methods in terms of geography studies. We will closely examine the scope and content indicated by social networks and social capital3 that have frequently appeared after 20004 and “scale” to present the future direction of research methods that closely analyze relationships between actors concerning fishing grounds. Focusing on relationships between actors enables us to provide applicable research methods for various case studies on fishing ground use. The “fishing grounds” in this paper are regarded as coastal zones where microscale fieldwork is effectively conducted. By focusing on the use of coastal fishing grounds that require an understanding of the actual situation at the micro-level, we can present research methods that leverage characteristics of the fisheries geography in Japan. In Sect. 2, a discussion of research trends in fields related to fishing ground use—especially in the context of commons studies—is presented. In Sect. 3, we examine how geography has recognized actors of fishing ground use and how they have been explained as subjects of analysis. In Sect. 4, we discuss connections between commons studies and geographical research to examine applications that benefit from geography within the commons studies as an interdisciplinary research area. Finally, Sect. 5 presents the future direction and prospects of case study methodology regarding fishing ground use.

2 Fishing Ground Use in Commons Studies 2.1 A Focus on Social Networks One of the major concerns of commons studies regarding fishing grounds is the impact assessment of policies on fishing ground use (Carlsson and Berkes 2005; 3 Referencing

Teratoko (2016a), we use “social relationship capital” as a translational equivalent of “social capital.” Social capital is the state of social network accumulation that are relationship bonds formed between actors. This perspective is also found in commons studies (e.g., Carlsson and Sandström 2008). Regarding social networks, we use the phrase “social network analysis” when indicating theory or research methods, and “social networks” when it is used as a trigger that provokes some action. These correspond with English writing, which indicates the former as “social network analysis” and the latter as “social networks.” 4 We decided to focus on the period after 2000 because, in Japanese fishery geography and rural geography up to 2000, social and economic factors that may impact fishing ground use and perspectives and methodologies that closely read into those factors have already been suggested (Tawa 1984; Kakimoto 1987; Yamauchi 2004). Also, in English journals (e.g., Geojornal), there is often the stipulation: “the most recent five to ten years, excluding particularly important works.”

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Carlsson and Sandström 2008; Bodin and Crona 2008; Crona et al. 2017). When impact assessments are performed, social networks and social capital are commonly incorporated as key concepts to understand movements of actors that are involved in fishing ground use (Berkes 2002; Bodin and Crona 2009; Carlsson and Sandström 2008; Marin and Berkes 2010; Nenadovi´c and Epstein 2016). Studies focusing on social networks have increased since the 2000s. The description and analysis methods for social networks were initially refined in sociology and policy studies, and then social network analysis frameworks have been applied to various settings such as the shape of family and community, the internal structure of organizations, and transactions between businesses (Kanamitsu 2003). As policies on management and conservation have transformed, studies on fishing ground use have employed social networks as explanatory factors to clarify the relationship between facilitation by actors from different positions toward the removal of social barriers to fishing ground management and conservation and the actual situation of fishing ground use (Bodin and Crona 2009). In particular, the relationship between ecological information that is disrupted or innovated depending on social network variations and the information base for planning fishing grounds management and conservation suited to environmental changes is considered as a process of “learning and adaption”.5 It has emerged through new connections among actors, such as fishers, Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs), and academic experts (Bodin and Crona 2009). Social network analysis and social capital have been used as methods and concepts to analyze how those new connections are constructed and to evaluate their strengths (Carlsson and Berkes 2005; Jansen et al. 2006; Bodin and Crona 2008; Carlsson and Sandström 2008; Marin and Berkes 2010; Sandström and Rova 2010a, 2010b; Gilmour et al. 2011; Gutiérrez et al. 2011; Marin et al. 2012; Nenadovi´c et al. 2016). Based on methodological studies by Carlsson and Berkes (2005), Jansen et al. (2006), and Carlsson and Sandström (2008), some researchers conducted case studies to question if any social network made sustainable fishing ground use possible. For example, in Chilean coasts, various actors such as fishers, government agencies, and other public and civilian organizations form a social network to promote co-management of the seabed resources in an uneven power balance. Marin and Berkes (2010) evaluated the centrality6 of each actor by measuring how each bond between actor spread and how many actors bonded to each other. The results of their evaluation reflected a power balance between actors that used the fishing grounds and the distribution of influence. In the same region, Marin et al. (2012) analyzed relationships built by small-scale fishers’ organizations with government agencies, research institutions, trade groups, and citizen groups to assess management performance by investigating how, and to what extent, social networks were accumulated as social capital. Sandström and Rova (2010b) presented two examples of Swedish 5 Considered to be the occupation of people innovating new systems for the sustainable use of natural

resources that are shared or used jointly, such as fishing grounds and forests (“natural resources”) in adaption to environmental changes (Folke et al. 2002). 6 An indicator that shows whether an actor is central or on the fringes within its social networks.

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fishing conservation areas to demonstrate that a state in which highly closed-off social networks intimately formed among actors with different attributes functioned positively while sharing conservation responsibilities among actors. Conversely, the benefits of heterogeneous social networks formed by actors despite their different perspectives were highlighted because close-knit social networks with high centrality may lead to organizational inertia, which in turn hinders access to new information (Bodin et al. 2006; Gilmour et al. 2011). These studies focused on individuals as units of analysis and examined the spread of actors and the number of bonds to quantitatively measure the power balance among actors formed by their unequal relationships. Based on the results of those measurements, characteristics of social networks were indicated by separating density, centrality, and the spread of actors. Impact assessment on fishing ground use was performed by studying characteristics of social networks, such as insularity or heterogeneity, and their relationship to sustainable fishing ground use. Interview surveys were conducted to comprehend current conditions that were difficult to quantitatively measure, such as knowledge, rules, and actor social attributes like ethnicity and gender (Marin and Berkes 2010; Nenadovi´c et al. 2016).

2.2 A Focus on “Scale” That fishing grounds are not used in isolation only by fishers is accepted. They are also used in relationships with influential actors of various sizes, such as governments and NPOs (Mikalsen and Jentoft 2001; Berkes 2002; Folke et al. 2002). In the late 2000s, the methods focusing on “scale”7 have emerged to explain relationships between actors surrounding such fishing ground use8 (Carlsson and Sandström 2008; Bodin and Crona 2009; Gruby and Basurto 2013; Nenadovi´c and Epstein 2016; Crona et al. 2017). For example, Nenadovi´c and Epstein (2016) examined how management and conservation were possible with actors in multiple geographical scales through case studies from four regions in the Gulf of California in Mexico, where small-scale fisheries were conducted through various fishing methods. This study clarified how insular or heterogeneous social capital accumulation resulted in the management and conservation of fishing grounds. It also indicated overlaps of social networks constructed by various actors that used fishing grounds and the role of key players who cross geographical scales. This can be viewed as an attempt to organize social networks by focusing on geographical scales and social capital as indicators of social 7 “Multi-level”

and “cross-level” are also used, but the consistency of these terms will be discussed later. 8 Regarding the focus on multi-scale viewpoints concerning natural resources, the feature “Scale and Cross-scale Dynamics” was compiled in Ecology and Society, vol. 10(2) to 12(1), consisting of eight papers, which also included contributions from geographers. One paper was by the geographers Adger et al. (2005). This feature did not include any case studies of fishing grounds, but it is safe to say that this trend influenced later empirical studies on fishing grounds.

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networks. Such a perspective of explaining social network overlap by focusing on “scale” may lead to an opportunity for discussion with the studies of geography. Next, we will consider how relationships between actors surrounding fishing grounds have been considered in geography, which uses “scale” as a key concept.

3 Research Trends in Geography Concerning Actors Related to Fishing Grounds 3.1 The Scope of Actors Related to Fishing Grounds Internationally, fishing villages in both developing and developed countries have experienced significant changes due to a shift towards market economies (Mansfield 2004a, b, 2006; Andriesse 2017a). The distribution of fish products in vulnerable distribution systems tends to involve fresh fish distribution as either a self-supporting endeavor or a situation where distribution is concluded within the neighboring region (Sakita 2018). In such cases, systems concerning fishing ground use are established among villages using fishing grounds, and targets for analysis become the bonds within those villages and with fishers. However, as market economy tendencies penetrate worldwide, different distribution systems have been established, and the fishing activities of local fishing practices—in both developed and developing countries—have come under the influence of broader markets (Barton and Fløysand 2010; Andriesse 2018). Due to improvements in transportation technology and distribution systems, it has even become possible to ship fresh fish over long distances, leading to certain fishing industry production being impacted by consumption trends in foreign countries (Mansfields 2003a; Hayashi 2003; Fabinyi et al. 2012; Fabinyi 2016). Consequently, lopsided demand from outside the area for certain fish species has caused a depletion of “local” resources (Fabinyi et al. 2012) with illegal and overfishing problems (Mansfield 2003a, 2004a; Tawa 2006; Fabinyi et al. 2012). Accordingly, efforts have been made to certify fish products obtained using sustainable fishing methods and to sell these in a way that distinguishes them from other catches of fish (Bush 2010; Silver and Hawkins 2017). Examples of global certification systems include MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) and MEL (Marine Eco-Label) (Ponte 2012; Fabinyi 2016; Suzuki 2017). Meanwhile, fishing methods determined by certification systems with the goal of conservation of fishing grounds sometimes result in the loss of control of fishing grounds to parties from outside local fishing areas and the possible disappearance of local practices regarding fishing ground use (Mansfield 2003a, b; McCarthy 2006; Satizábal 2018). In developing countries, relief measures to improve income from fisheries have been sought for households experiencing poverty, and measures were implemented to keep legal fishers from being economically disadvantaged in comparison with illegal fishers (Andriesse 2017a). Studies have focused on the excessive

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use of fishing grounds and arrangements that oppose overexploitation caused by influences external to the local area. Distributors and consumers have also become targets for analysis to consider sustainable fishing ground use. Case studies in various fields investigate the adaptation of fishers to climate change and disasters (Takano and Onodera 2016; Andriesse 2017b, 2018), and the relationship between tourism and environmental conservation movements (Ike 2001; Sato 2001; Kagawa 2017; Köpsel and Walsh 2018). Tourism industry professionals and academic experts from NPOs and laboratories are regarded as relevant participants. Demonstrating the variety of participants involved in generating new responses to changes in external settings regarding fishing grounds presents an important perspective when examining the sustainable use of fishing grounds. Compared to Japan, studies in English-speaking areas are diverse, with methodological scales ranging from the local to the global. Results of previous analyses qualitatively indicate shifting power balances between fishing ground users—from local fishers to national and global expanding companies and organizations—as they construct food supply systems under the influence of markets. Those studies seek to clarify how actor relationships surrounding food supply systems and disaster recovery impacts fishers and fishing ground use. Japanese study trends are typically based on detailed empirical studies and conducted at the micro-scale, while fewer studies are done on bilateral relations, as observed in the international research trends.9 Detailed explanations of regionalities or localities are a forte of Japanese geography. However, even in policy studies and fisheries economics, among many studies to understand conditions related to fishery as activities with the goal of regional development. Geographers are required to find ways to devise differentiation from other fields and demonstrate unique approaches to geography that do not end with detailed explanations of localities10 (Tawa 2017).

3.2 The Perception of Relationships Among Actors In order of methodological scale, this section presents geographical classifications of ways in which social networks emerged within the continuing expansion of fishing ground users.

9 In the construction of frameworks for geographical studies focusing on rural areas in Japan, while

there have been certain results on fishing settlements (Tawa 2005), it was argued that there is also a need for the construction of frameworks for sharing discussions because these studies had generally developed apart from the research trends of the English-speaking world (Imazato 2008). Moreover, Imazato (2008) reviewed Japanese papers on movements in Japanese rural communities in English. 10 Hayashi (2013) suggested practical participation in the fisheries industry as a trend to raise the presence of geography in fisheries industry studies.

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27

Cross-National Scale

The largest scale as the unit of analysis is relationships among actors relates to the rights of use of ocean resources that span across nations (Mansfield 2004a, b, 2006; St. Martin 2007; Fairbank et al. 2018). For example, Mansfield (2004b, 2006) focused on Pacific cod management in the North Pacific as a case to discuss the limits of resource management through private ownership of market-led fishing grounds that had been implemented by neoliberal policies. Similarly, St. Martin (2007) revealed how this structure—where fishing ground use is through private ownership—excluded local fishers that have cultivated indigenous ecological knowledge. Conversely, there were some cases in which management policies were created to encompass local practices by fishers in coastal fishing villages11 (Fairbank et al. 2018).

3.2.2

Regional Scale

The next largest analysis scale is research that examines competitive relationships among actors surrounding usage rights in coastal zones (Young 2001; St. Martin 2006; Cheong 2008; Quist and Nygren 2015; Fabinyi 2018; Satizábal and Batterbury 2018). For example, using the case of Baja California, Young (2001) presented the role played by practices of residents against the exploitation of fisheries resources due to the introduction of new external actors such as private businesses. This study analyzed the influence of state government policy interventions on coastal fisheries in particular, at both regional and local area levels. These studies analyzed relationships among actors while observing overlapping geographical scales based on detailed primary data obtained from ten interviews via snowball sampling and field survey on the topic of usage rights in coastal zones of central and regional governments, large-scale fisheries companies, other large companies, local fishers, and other residents.12 In particular, they qualitatively analyzed claims of each actor on fishing ground use rights and gaps between each statement. There have also been case studies focusing on the geographical scale of actors to fill the resultant gaps (Tompkins et al. 2002; Stojanovic and Barker 2008; Steenbergen et al. 2017). In a case study on coastal zones in Trinidad and Tobago, Tompkins et al. (2002) conducted semi-structured interviews with government supervisors and other agents and used data obtained from participatory workshops with resource management supervisors to examine relationships between social networks dependent on social groups as villages and social networks formed by actors interrelated by policy systems. This study revealed how social networks based in the same village shared mutual trust among members provided rules, organizations, and adjustment process. 11 In

Japan, the Fisheries Reform Act was passed in December 2018, opening the door to apprehensions about the state of coastal fishing grounds management and conservation, which had been observed worldwide, becoming exposed to various transformations such as the neoliberal private ownership of fishing grounds. 12 One example of a Japanese case study from the same perspective is Kagawa (1998).

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It also analyzed interactions in the range in which each influence extended to clarify how arrangements that made sustainable fishing ground use possible were formed.

3.2.3

Local Scale

In the aforementioned studies, fishers were grouped in analysis units as “fishers’ groups.” However, such groups consist of smaller groups based on settlements or fishing methods. Case studies conducted in Japan and overseas examine the influence of relationships among these small groups on fishing ground use (St. Martin 2001; Adger 2003; Miyazawa 2005; Brewer 2012a; Sakita 2015, 2017; Grydehøj and Nurdin 2016; Andriesse 2018). Brewer (2012a) used the results of commons studies as a starting point to prove that, as actors of collective management of lobster fishing grounds shifted from local to state levels, membership in local resource user groups declined, thus leading to decreased resource amounts. St. Martin (2001) similarly highlighted the importance of local social groups as actors for resource management. Grydehøj and Nurdin (2016) demonstrated that an informal fishing ground use system embedded in a settlement was allowing harmful fishing methods to continue on fishing grounds. It suggests that villages cannot necessarily be perceived as positive influences. Similar case studies were found on fisheries geography in Japan (Miyazawa 2005; Sakita 2015, 2017). Miyazawa (2005) used the analysis unit of groups according to fishing methods on an island, while Sakita (2015) used local social groups, like settlements and districts, to reveal how the status of management through sustainable fishing ground use formed within relationships to actor groups influencing wider areas like Fisheries Cooperative Associations (FCAs) and local governments. Sakita (2015) highlighted how actor groups interrelated while focusing on how geographic scales overlapped to examine conditions that created regional diversity in the fishing ground use for each settlement. Sakita (2017) also highlighted the accumulation of negotiations through the responses of fishing household groups as a main factor in creating such local diversity.13 Outside Japan, some studies have focused on ethnic groups as the unit of analysis for small groups of fishers (Carter and Hill 2007; Dressler and Fabinyi 2011; Quimby 2015; Satizábal 2018). Carter and Hill (2007) conducted a study on aboriginal sea cucumber fishing to see if indigenous ecological knowledge belonging to easily marginalized ethnic minorities would be shared as public knowledge in a broader scope when conservation programs for fishing ground use were being framed. Satizábal (2018) revealed that in small-scale fisheries by a community of people of African descent in the Gulf of Tribuga, Colombia, the fish product supply system

13 Miyazawa

(2005) studied the structure of sustainable fishing ground use with the analysis unit of one regionally bonded cooperative system, while Sakita (2015, 2017) used the analysis unit of multiple settlements. These studies elaborated on the issue of social and economic factors that develop on land influencing fishing ground use, as demonstrated by Tawa (1984).

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of a market-led “responsible fisheries”14 negatively affected the local system of sustainable fishing ground use. This study was based on semi-structured interviews with fishers, distributors, government caseworkers, NGOs, restaurant employees, and foundation managers. These can be considered empirical studies on a micro-scale that demonstrate the harmful effects of being subsumed by systems that develop globally through market-led neoliberal policies concerning fishing grounds, in line with Mansfield (2004b, 2006) and St. Martin (2007).15 In case studies that focused on small groups based on the style of settlement or fishing as units of analysis, data obtained from interviews primarily with individual fishers were used for understanding their collective actions and for explaining how these actions affected fishing ground use. Although concerned issues and analysis subjects were different for each study, they were likened by their depiction of conditions in which fishing ground use systems of local social groups were designed according to external influences, which were then adjusted within relationships among groups, and how this process feeds back into the formation of relationships in fishing ground use.

3.2.4

Individual Scale

The smallest analysis units are found in empirical studies that analyze the actions and behaviors of individuals or households (Ikeguchi 2001; Belton 2012; Beitl 2015; Bottema et al. 2018; Maeda 2018). Belton (2012) and Bottema et al. (2018) examined inland aquaculture, while Beitl (2015)16 examined blood clam collection in coastal mangrove swamps. In both studies, individual social relationships formed among individual fishers or households were delicately traced by ethnographic description. Bottema et al. (2018) compared how groups (to which individual fishers involved in social relationships of “between individuals,” “external relationships,” and “assembly”) respond to various environmental risks. Based on an ecological anthropology perspective, Ikeguchi (2002) and Beitl (2015) depicted the state of fishing ground use with a focus on individual fishers’ actions determined by their experiences.17

14 This refers to the “Standard of Conduct for Responsible Fishing” adopted by the FAO General Assembly in November 1995. In this adoption issue, the importance of the fishing industry was indicated in world food safety and security and aimed to develop fishing industries that would enable the sustainable use of fishery resources (Watanabe and Ono 2000). 15 With a different perspective on the influence of actors outside the region on local fishing ground use, Yokoyama (2011) used the case of kombu aquaculture in Hakodate, revealing that product prices were conferred as a result of business transactions outside regionally generated disparities in the economic value of fishing grounds used. 16 Beitl’s academic background is in cultural anthropology, but as this paper (Beitl 2015) was published in a geographical journal, it is being treated here as geographical research. 17 This is positioned as a study that elaborates on applications of ecological anthropological examination methods in geography, demonstrated by Tawa (1984) and others.

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Some studies may also reveal that the actions of individuals are not self-contained; rather, they are determined within relationships to others between different geographical scales of individuals and groups. Maeda (2018) analyzed this point with a focus on the actions of individual fishers. The analysis subjects were the employment workforce of a boat seine fishery management entity comprised of a group of three boats and fishers who also acted as business managers. This was an attempt at explaining how fishing grounds are used under employer-employee relationships while employees come and go between the individual and group level and play both roles. Regardless, the group featured in this study remained at the level of the threegroup boat seine fishery management entity. To comprehend fishing ground use with the involvement of multiple fishers, it is conceivably important to position social relationships between individuals and groups within wider social networks. In the geography studies, exploring relationships among actors has been implemented with focusing on systems and organizations on various geographical scales. They also involved analyzing actors’ roles in the formation processes of those systems and organizations. Specifically, these studies highlighted the need to comprehend how global markets and national policies are reflected in the practices of local fishers. They also presented explanations of the main factors that yield the regional diversity of sustainable fishing ground use by local fishers.

4 The Potential for Geography in Commons Studies 4.1 Focus on “Scale” and Its Significance Since the early 2000s, studies by geographers on resource management have been published in special issues for commons studies such as the International Journal of Commons and Ecology & Society (Armitage 2008). Giordano’s (2003) pioneering study stated that, while commons were gathering interest across disciplines, no theoretical progress was observed in geography. Similarly, Moss (2014) noted in the preface to the feature “Spatiality of the Commons” in the International Journal of the Commons, “an avoidance of the commons is seen in the abstraction of space in commons studies, and in spatial science”,18,19 stressing the need for theoretical discussion on the geographical scale of group and space, and on resource distributions and the scope of rights in particular. Young (2002) and Berkes (2002) highlighted that social and political power in organizations and systems make sustainable fishing ground use possible and that local groups involved in a small geographical scale are subordinate to actors such as governments and companies involved in 18 This is written as “spatial science” in this paper, but it has been determined that this is referring to geography based on the preceding and the following context. 19 In the International Journal of the Commons, papers using the keywords “space,” “place,” “territory,” or “scale” were often included as features.

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larger geographical scales. They thus stressed the importance of understanding the movements of each actor while noting the geographical scale. Many studies explored the movements of fishing ground users by focusing on the overlap of geographical scales (St. Martin 2009; Brewer 2012b; Gruby and Basurto 2013; Epstein et al. 2014; Barnett and Eakin 2015). The awareness of geographical scale in commons studies has developed through discussions with poststructuralists studying political ecology (Brewer 2012b). However, the geographical perspective in commons studies is on the gaps between boundaries of government spheres and ranges of influence. Even though the term “scale” is used, its meaning has never been explicitly shared. With an academic background in policy studies, Poteete (2012) organized two concepts of “multi-level systems” and “multi-scale linkage,” and identified their blend. For example, in policy studies, regarding “multi-level systems,” the interaction of systems concerning social, economic, and ecological conditions are concerned as research topics, and the systems are understood as products of human agency. In interdisciplinary research, such as policy studies or commons studies, “scale” is often regarded as a synonym for “level” defined by a spatial range.20 Sayer (2008), a geographer, demonstrated that many geographers also interchangeably use “scale” with “level” (geographical scale) and “size” (methodological scale). Since social groups related to the fishing ground use are particularly disposed to being indivisible from spatial expanse, both terms must be used properly and intentionally.

4.2 Differences in the Social Network Analysis 4.2.1

The Depiction of Regional Characteristics in Commons Studies

To analyze the relationships between actors, commons studies have used research methods such as social network analysis and social capital. Of these, it was revealed that regional differences among local communities, such as settlements, that are based on local bonded groups (hereafter “local communities” is used in this sense) were connected to sustainable use of fishing grounds. Conversely, data were collected on individual unit levels that failed to consider social and cultural idiosyncrasies of regionally bonded groups. Sandström and Rova (2010b) concluded that social networks were insular or heterogeneous, and demonstrated how they contributed to the process of “learning and adaption” without considering types of social relationships in which diverse social networks were constructed. In general, as a condition of making the process of “learning and adaption” possible, there is a tendency to score and measure the number of clusters of bonds between individual actors. Berkes (2002) and Young (2001) suggested that actions of individuals are influenced by broad geographical scales and various cultural, social 20 Poteete

(2012) referenced Neuman (2009) on the topic of “scale,” who took up the principal subject of “the politics of scale” that had not been sufficiently examined in political ecology.

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idiosyncrasies of local communities, but these studies remained as a simplified explanation, like how the strong relationships of local fishers’ groups and cooperation with outside actors made sustainable fishing ground use possible. Therefore, although detailed data were collected at the individual unit level—such as ethnicity, gender, and personal history, which would reflect regional idiosyncrasies—such data have not been returned in the analysis. Additionally, most bonds between local actors that make the sustainable fishing ground use possible are always endowed with insularity or heterogeneity due to their differences. Thus, merely presenting these traits is an insufficient explanation. Moreover, it is not always the case that sustainable fishing ground use is possible because of the presence of insularity or heterogeneity. As Bodin et al. (2006), Gilmour et al. (2011), and Grydehøj and Nurdin (2016) demonstrated, there are cases in which groups possessing insularity or heterogeneity have a negative impact.21 There is a need to evaluate roles played by insularity and heterogeneity, considering the social characteristics of the local community.

4.2.2

The Perception of Social Characteristics in Geography

In geography, some studies from rural social geography22 examined the social characteristics of local communities that can affect how social capital accumulates (Yamauchi 2000, 2002; Imazato 2004, 2005). Imazato (2005) revealed the influence of the family status of individual households in settlements as social groups. Yamauchi (2000, 2002) clarified the mechanism in which fishing households are reproduced. These studies considered the multilayered nature of rural society and closely analyzed a local society’s structure. Further work is needed in the field of methodological studies that closely comprehend the influence of actor relationships on fisheries resource management. The organizational theory was suggested to tackle this problem (Yamauchi 2004). Miyazawa (2005) and Sakita (2015, 2017) focused on groups as the unit of analysis to investigate relationships among actors to clarify mechanisms in which management functions through the sustainable use of fishing grounds by place-based bonded groups such as settlements or districts. However, these studies remained, presenting “the negotiation of fishing households groups” (hereafter “negotiation” is used in this sense) as a main factor in the formation of sustainable fishing ground use; and studies outside Japan also go no further than identifying the presence of social networks and social capital as factors in the formation of “negotiation” (Brewer 2012a; Andriesse 2017a; Andriesse and Lee 2017). “Negotiation” is indicated as one of the facts in the process leading to the collective actions of each group, while the “negotiation” process itself has not been sufficiently examined considering social relationships in a local community. The subject of “negotiation” as a unit of analysis is confined to local communities 21 Based on a review of geographic studies related to the commons in general and not only fishing grounds, Jeffrey et al. (2012) critically examined “enclosure-commons” to consider the modern processes of exclusion, violence, and substitution. 22 Research methods until the 1980s were studied in detail by Kakimoto (1987).

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and other functional groups. Given various “negotiation” processes exist in each settlement and local diversity can be seen in the ways of sustainable fishing grounds use, it is conceivably necessary to analyze the process in which individual or household movements are integrated into the collective actions of regionally diverse social groups. Geography in the English-speaking world is discussing attempts an interaction with commons studies using social networks and social capital as key concepts. For instance, the journal Ecology and Society set up a debate in which the geographers Newman and Dale (2005) and the commons studies scholars Bodin et al. (2006) discussed their understanding of social networks and social capital regarding Tompkins and Adger’s (2004) geographical study. Tompkins and Adger (2004) found that social vulnerability is reduced by the expansion and integration of social networks, leading to improved ecosystem resilience. However, Newman and Dale (2005) criticized them for abstracting the diversity and functions of the actor relationship that secures social networks. Specifically, although highly insular social networks are required for cultivating trust among actors, they criticized the simplified evaluation of these network functions because such insular networks could undermine the diversity of the group. From the same perspective, Bodin et al. (2006) exemplified that rigorousness that accompanies a highly insular network can negatively impact the entire network. Similar criticism was made by Pelling and High (2005) to Adger (2003), which is coomon the perspective with Tompkins and Adger (2004), for the simplified explanation that equated “insularity with strength” and “heterogeneity with weakness.” The shift in fishing ground users through connections with public institutions does not necessarily guarantee advantages for local individual fishers. It has been proven that the glorification of local practice without a premise is pregnant with the potential for corruption and collusion.23 While social networks and social capital are used with terms like institutions and resources, those concepts may become barriers in cross-disciplinary discussions with sociology rather than being used as frameworks for analysis.

4.3 The Contribution Potential of Geography in Interdisciplinary Discussions The previous section presented differences between commons studies and geography regarding methods for analyzing relationships between actors in fishing ground use. Commons studies have progressed methods for demonstrating how social networks expand spatially by focusing on individuals as the analytical unit. However, there are problems with examining how to situate those social networks in multi-layered local communities and how they are incorporated into the collective actions of sustainable 23 Criticisms and problematic issues in the application of this in studies and policymaking based on

a biased understanding of social capital are presented by Watabe (2011).

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fishing ground use. Conversely, in geography, methods have been refined, focusing on groups as the analytical unit for demonstrating structures in which actor relationships have developed within local diversity. However, in most studies on fishing ground use, the actor relationships of collective actions were examined with local communities as the analytical unit, except for Maeda (2018) that tentatively illustrated connections between individuals and groups. Therefore, there were still problems with methods that analyzed the “negotiation” process in which individual and household actions were integrated into group decisions. Considering such differences between academic disciplines, issues to be overcome have been identified to share a discussion. Scott (2015: 450)24 stated that: Social network analysis works with grain of contemporary environmental governance discourse—resilience, partnerships, community, consensus, collaboration, co-management, adaptation, participation, and social capital—that are recounted in the principle SNAenvironmental governance journal Ecology and Society. However, this research has emerged in isolation from heterodox social science literature.

As a primary factor for such isolation, Scott (2015) criticized for not fully comprehending matters that are difficult to quantify, such as gender and ethnicity, due to the concentration on quantitative social network analysis. Concerning environmental issues, in particular, Scott (2015) indicated that there is a need for understanding social network patterns that follow more regional contexts since such issues often emerge as local challenges. Moreover, even in Argent (2019), which reviewed fishing ground use and rural societies overall, the decision-making of local communities in negotiation to environmental changes has been developed concerning the overlap of geographical scales. Since natural disasters concerning environmental changes bring about differences in risk due to pre-existing social inequalities, vulnerability to risk is distributed unequally, both socially and spatially (Cheshire et al. 2015). There is thus a need for frameworks that closely examine local structures that support local practices in negotiation to environmental changes. The conclusions of these studies were also applicable to the ways of sustainable fishing ground use that emerged as local challenges. As the ways of contributions of geography toward interdisciplinary discussions, Cardwell and Thornton (2015) suggested that the relationship between human activities and natural environments needs to be illustrated while considering the contexts of local areas and places embedded in vertically integrated networks from the global to the local. Moss (2014) sought regional differences in the use and valuation of natural resources and how actors involved in natural resource use worked out for management measures through overlapping geographical scales. Moss (2014) then sought to study how local organizations and institutions that would implement those measures would be established. This was an attempt to showcase local practices and actor roles and closely analyze how actors functioned within social network groups. Social geography and economic geography have discussed methods that closely examine how individual and household actions are integrated into collective actions 24 This is a paper by a sociologist, but it is being treated as a discussion of geography because it appeared in Progress in Human Geography, a representative journal of human geography.

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while considering the social characteristics of certain areas (Bunnel and Coe 2001). Recently, Jones (2014) stated that while major theories like social networks and social capital are commonly shared concepts, the focus has not entirely shifted from theory to methodology, and argued that the size of concepts often unsuited to empirical studies tends to be applied to studies on local phenomena without enough conceptual consideration. Thus, there has not been enough accumulation of results in methodological or empirical studies in the fisheries geography—a topic for future discussion.25 Conversely, the perspective of closely examining individual and household behavior concerning upper-level geographical scales were found in empirical studies on agriculture by Iga (2008), Teratoko (2016b), and Yoshida (2015), and on fish product distribution by Ikeguchi (2002, 2007). Teratoko (2016b) focused on one settlement and clarified how social relationships among farming households and their connections with actors from outside contribute to each farming household’s business and their survival as a producing area. In doing so, Teratoko (2016b) classified the form of social networks into four quadrants of “Bridging/Bonding” and “Structural/Recognition.” Yoshida (2015) clarified local systems that enable farmland management, agricultural produce shipping, and co-working based on the social relationships of farming households. This study focused particularly on analyzing social relationships of farming households and other actors through combinations of multiplex-uniplex social relationships that connect nodes, revealing how local systems shift under the mutual influences of social networks while one family plays multiple roles for certain purposes (Fig. 1).

5 The Prospects of Methodology Concerning Relationships Between Actors The results of the studies in the geography and commons studies that we have seen in the review thus far can be summarized as follows. Commons studies have the advantage of visibly demonstrating the spread of social networks, the strength or weakness of ties, and mediation, depending on concepts of social networks and social capital, and using individuals or households as the unit. However, issues were seen with the perspective of grasping the spread of social networks within layers of geographical scales. Regarding local communities positioned in geographical scales between individuals and municipalities or states, in particular, there is a need to consider social characteristics that are difficult to capture in a multiple-choice type of survey. Therefore, analyses that do not rely on giving scores for data obtained in 25 The perspective of closely reading individual and household movements within the traffic of upper-level geographical scales can be seen in case studies on agriculture by Iga (2008), Teratoko (2016b), and Yoshida (2015), and on marine product distribution by Ikeguchi (2002) and Ikeguchi (2007). Of these, Teratoko (2016b) focuses on analyzing the form of social networks, and Yoshida (2015) on the combination of stratified social relationships that connect the nodes.

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K. Yoshida The structure of multi scale networks Village, town or city Fishing settlement

Multiplex-uniplex social ties among fishing households The other city

The space of fishery settlement

The social network of shipment marketing

The social network of co-management

Show on details among fishing households

Individual fishing activities

Ego fishing household Other fishing households

Distributor Social relationships

settlement Village, town or city Neighborhood Pioneers Kinship Relationship of the same elementary school Relationship of the same junior high school Other relationships

Fig. 1 A model of multi-scale networks in the space of fishery (Source Modified from Yoshida 2009 and Yoshida 2013)

surveys such as the presence of organizations or the number of meetings regarding fishing ground use are needed. In geography, there is a factor of making explanations from within overlapping geographical scales at the group level and above, on relationships between actors, such as those between local communities, regional governments, or other organizations. However, issues were seen in leveling networks of individuals into the collective actions of a group. With this background, our concluding remarks present how social capital and social networks can be used in geographic research as methods for analyzing relationships between fishing ground users. Social capital can be viewed as useful when presenting assessments of policies with one or more nations as the unit. As analyses of this kind would require quantitative data extending a broad range, it would be possible to map villages where structures for sustainable fishing ground use functions easily with social conditions using a common question form (Olson 2010; Marin et al. 2012; Nenadovi´c and Epstein 2016). Next, quantitative analyses in which social network analysis is applied as a framework may be useful when considering conditions for establishing sustainable fishing ground use with the involvement of several groups and within relationships between multiple villages in a single bay. Data are gathered from surveys featuring a shared question form (Marin and Berkes 2010 and others), or from fishing industry-related materials, government-related materials, newspapers, and statements of commercial

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fishers (St. Martin 2001). Then, the presence or absence of various “negotiations” that unfold in order to create systems for fishing ground use among groups, and the full picture of movements of power, either by drawing responses or shutting them down, could be understood from measurements of actors’ centrality or mediation. Consequently, it may be possible to portray the power relationships in the “negotiation” process in which systems are built.26 Methods that qualitatively analyze social networks may be useful when examining how on the micro-unit level from one to several settlements and the actions of individuals or households concerning fishing ground use are integrated into collective acts. These methods may also be useful in examining “response” processes towards the construction of systems among multiple settlements that share the same fishing grounds. The management of fishing grounds that is made possible through practices based on social relationships or local ecological knowledge stocked in various fishers’ groups and factors that bring about their local diversity has been explained, but these analysis units were summed up a settlement (Brewer 2012a; Sakita 2015). Regarding individual and household actions, the process in which individual histories and actions have taken the course within society has been described using ethnographic methods based on meticulous interviews and participant-observations (Ikeguchi 2001; Fujinaga 2013; Beitl 2015). However, regarding the overlap of geographical scales, studies have not gone beyond an examination of a unidirectional horizontal path of the two geographical scales of local society and the individual. It is possible that positioning individual or household actions within the coming and going of groups and other geographical scale groups, and within geographical scales that extend further, will be a methodological topic in the future. Fishing grounds are used within the regulations of multiple actors. Fishery management is independent at the level of each operating body, but fishing grounds are used jointly with the involvement of different actors, and user rights are distributed to multiple actors. In such circumstances, when establishing systems for fishing ground use, in addition to the interiors of each group, influence is shared with systems established by other groups. For this reason, establishing systems among groups is conducted through the process of “negotiations” to group wishes. Moreover, because systems established by separate groups are products of volleying responses to the wishes of each member within groups, there is a need to closely analyze them within the comings and goings of groups and individuals. Looking towards analyses of relationships between actors involved in such responses, one can be mentioned as a method for grasping social relationships that bind individuals and social network groups built by various goals within overlaps of geographical scales.27 This method first requires an understanding of social characteristics that explain the kinds of bonds that groups depended on to form each 26 While

it does not cover fishing ground use, there have been studies that use social network analysis as a framework to examine the employment process for Indonesians of Japanese descent into fisheries-related industries (Meguro 2010). 27 Previous research using these methods can be seen in a study on farmland use and shipping product (Yoshida 2015).

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geographical scale and conditions of their sphere of influence. Data are needed on social relationships that bind together individuals that compose the group. Data can only be collected through a detailed field survey. This method of investigation has the advantage of being emphasized and inherited over a long period in Japanese rural geography. As methods for understanding individuals and households within changing and multi-layered geographic scales require a detailed field survey, it may have a high affinity with Japanese fishery geography. It is possible to raise awareness of the Japanese fishery geography by refining methodologies that examine empirical studies from the perspective of focusing on geographical scales and closely reading qualitative actor relationships. This approach may be more effective than previous tendencies of qualitative research that have accumulated many results in commons studies. Based on these circumstances, it is believed that quantitative analysis methods through social capital and social network analysis are appropriate for empirical studies with a unit of analysis of the actor developing on a larger geographical scale and that methods for qualitative analysis of social networks may be useful with actors developing in smaller geographical scales, such as individuals, households, and villages, as a supplement to understanding movements that cannot be fully absorbed by social capital and quantitative analysis. In interdisciplinary research fields, there is a marked potential for contributions that leverage the strengths of Japanese geography in qualitative analysis. Furthermore, there are perspectives (not presented in this study) that should be noted when using individuals as units of analysis, including a study on non-human actors (Ikeguchi 2014; Iga 2017), and others that employ approaches from perspectives such as emotions and friendship (Bunnel et al. 2012). Cross-disciplinary research, including geography, has also been applied to social implementation (Breslow et al. 2016). We hope to expand the scope of this study by reconsidering it with the aforementioned information. Acknowledgements This article is the translated article of Yoshida (2019) in the Quarterly Journal of Geography, 71(3). Additional explanations and revising for international readers are added in the translation process.

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Rethinking the State of Fisheries Cooperative Associations Through the Long-Term Consolidation Movement in Japan Seishiro Sakita and Ayumu Matsui

Abstract This chapter sheds light on the gross trend of the geographical aspects of Fisheries Cooperative Associations (FCAs) in Japan by focusing on the FCA consolidation movement in the last half-century. Japanese FCAs have often been praised for their community-based management of fishing grounds in the Territorial Use Rights for Fisheries (TURF), while their spatial allocation and institutional structure have been changed in various ways through the long-term consolidation movement. In the present study, a spatio-temporal analysis and three case studies demonstrate that the varying process of FCA consolidation between/within prefectures has resulted in the current spatial allocation of FCAs. Each case from different regions and in different phases of consolidation also shows that institutional changes in FCAs create a gap between large-scale FCAs and local fishing communities. Thus, the consolidation strategy may need to be more adaptable to different situations while also considering how fishing communities manage the TURF based on their tradition of local fisheries management. Keywords Fisheries Cooperative Association · Consolidation · Fisheries management · Geographic Information System (GIS)

1 Introduction This chapter aims to explore the recent changes in Japanese Fisheries Cooperative Associations (FCAs), focusing especially on the trend of continuous FCA consolidation throughout the last half-century and its influence on the management of local fisheries in coastal areas. S. Sakita (B) National Museum of Ethnology, Suita, Japan e-mail: [email protected] A. Matsui Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hirosaki University, Hirosaki, Japan © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Ikeguchi et al. (eds.), Adaptive Fisheries Governance in Changing Coastal Regions in Japan, International Perspectives in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4240-8_3

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It is widely accepted that a cooperative can improve the resilience and stability of a fishing community by providing localized fisheries with management and social welfare (FAO 2009; Bennet 2017). Certain cooperatives may be capable of managing indigenous fisheries, which includes providing internal means—not a government mandate—to control the fishing effort, thus fulfilling one of the general functions of collectively coping with environmental problems (McCay 1980). Especially in managing small-scale fisheries dispersed along coastal regions, local cooperatives, as organizations of fishing communities, enable local fisheries to adapt to situations and demands that the central government often neglects (Pollnac 1991). The FCA in Japan has a reputation of being a strongly place—and communitybased organization, rather than a cooperative as a management body that we see in other countries. Community-based FCAs are vital for the institution of Japanese fisheries because, generally speaking, the management of local fisheries in Japan is deeply rooted in the historical and traditional background of the community (Makino and Matsuda 2005). Japanese fisheries have often been referred to as one of the most sophisticated co-management systems in the world, particularly for their rightsbased management of common-pool resources through the Territorial Use Rights for Fisheries (TURF) of fishing communities (i.e. FCA in most cases) (Feeny et al. 1990). Many have written about Japanese FCAs with a special interest in the agency they grant to the communal and traditional management of fisheries (cf. Akimichi and Ruddle 1984; Short 1989). In this chapter, we do not intend to repeat the outline and significance of the institution of Japanese fisheries, already well described in previous literature. Instead, this chapter presents a different aspect of Japanese FCAs that has not been emphasized much in international contexts but has been slowly emerging in recent years. First, we start with a brief explanation of the relationship between fishing villages and FCAs in Japan: how they have been important for Japanese fisheries and how they have been affected by socio-economic changes over the past several decades. Second, to examine those changes, we present the results of two different works: a spatial analysis of the special allocation of FCAs and three case studies showing different phases of FCA consolidation. To conclude, we discuss what we have learned from this research and what should be done to better understand Japanese FCAs and the management of local fisheries.

1.1 Japanese Fishing Villages and FCAs In Japan, social scientists have often used the FCA as a guide to determine the location and range of a fishing village. Yoshihiko Yabuuchi, a Japanese human geographer, defined a fishing village as “a social group which forms an FCA and sustains its livelihood primarily in relation to fishing practices” (Yabuuchi 1958: 15, translated from Japanese by the authors). This definition was largely cogent and plausible because the origins of FCA go back to local villages since the early modern period; for example, the first Meiji Fishery Law in Japan enacted in 1901 incorporated local villages as “fishery associations” (gyogyo kumiai) and their traditional customs as

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“fishery rights” (gyogyo ken) to implement modern fishery institutions that were not against the social order of local communities and their conventional ways of fisheries management. Since then, local villages have conducted not only their own fisheries management but also whole community governance in support of the legislative system even after the FCA replaced the fishery association post World War II. In this sense, FCA has often been typical of “residents’ association” in the fishery regions described by Maeda in Changing Community Governance in the Coastal Fishing Regions in this book. The concept of this correlation—the FCA as a village—has been persuasive and shared among both researchers and practitioners alike, as long as the location and organizational structure of the FCA corresponded to a certain fishing village. Most Japanese FCAs were small-scale, especially in the early stages of the postWorld War II period. As a part of institutional reforms after World War II, the Fishery Law was amended in 1949, after the Fisheries Cooperative Association Law was passed in 1948. Based on these new pieces of legislation, almost all fishing villages were eager for their own FCAs, even though some of them did not have a large enough fishing population, production, or financial bases to sustain their management. As a result, after a short while, many of these vulnerable FCAs fell into a state of crisis due to organizational instability and financial difficulties. Meanwhile, fishing villages experienced significant socio-economic changes owing to the rapid economic growth in Japan during the 1950s and 1960s. More and more young people moved away from fishing villages in response to the huge demand for labor in urban areas. Even in fishing villages, secondary and tertiary industries (especially tourism) became an important source of income for many. Fishing technologies were also substantially developed in this period. This changed how local fisheries were managed and required fishers to invest in and engage with their fisheries more intensively. Eventually, most of the “traditional” fishing villages in coastal areas were dissolved and transformed to modernized forms by the end of the 1970s (Otsu and Sakai 1981). Such changes steadily caused both an actual and conceptual mismatch between FCAs and fishing villages that we have assumed is socio-spatially correspondent (Yamauchi 2004). As fisheries have lost its prime position as the main livelihood in certain fishing villages, the FCA that once consisted of whole villages has gradually taken on the character of a specialized organization only for fishing people. On the other hand, as we demonstrate later, consolidation as a remedy for the financial crisis has also spurred on the delocalization of FCAs. Barret and Okudaira (1995) examined the differentiation process of three neighboring FCAs in Hokkaido and argued that, in this particular case, there was little evidence to expect a coherent response from the FCAs to cope with community crises. Their case study described how the imbalance in resource distribution and economic power fostered political and demographic imbalances between the FCAs. They regarded the existence of such an imbalance in Japan as a “testimony to the insidious nature of proprietorial interests in the fishery,” which has been a common experience of fishing communities in Western countries (ibid: 225). Nevertheless, many researchers have praised the uniqueness and significance of the Japanese FCA, and we must admit that nowadays fewer and fewer FCAs play an important role in fisheries management and local community governance.

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1.2 History of FCA Consolidation To improve and optimize the management efficiency of FCAs, several policy measures have been consecutively implemented for almost half a century to encourage consolidation. The first was the “Law for Promotion of Fisheries Cooperative Association Amalgamation,” passed in 1961. It was succeeded by the “Act on Support for Fisheries Cooperative Association Amalgamation” in 1967, and retitled the “Fisheries Cooperative Association Amalgamation Promotion Act” in 1998. These policies intended to provide financial and practical support for consolidation plans. The deadline for the consolidation proposal was first set for 1970 but later extended every five years until 2008. Under the mentioned laws, many small-scale FCAs chose to merge with or be absorbed by other FCAs, combining their members and capital to recapitalize themselves. Figure 1 shows how the total number of coastal FCAs has been changing under the long-term consolidation movement. Note that the FCAs that organize inland fisheries are not included in this datum. The number of FCAs hit a record high in 1955 when there were 3,542 active ones along coastal areas. As of March 2018, however, there were 995 active FCAs, a decrease of more than 73% from 1955. We need to be careful about the fact that consolidation is not the only reason for it. Between 1972 2,500

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Fig. 1 Changes in the total number of FCAs and decreases according to reasons, 1972–2017 (Source Fisheries Cooperative Annual Reports. Data of the following years were unavailable: 1977, 1982, 1989 and 1991)

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and 2017, about 88% of the decrease was due to consolidation and about 12% due to dissolution or a transfer of authority. According to Hokimoto (2009), the first peak in consolidation arrived in 1965, right after the first law promoting it was passed. After a somewhat “quiet” period in the 1970s and 1980s, consolidation started increasing again in 1993, and even accelerated after 2003. Hokimoto (2009) pointed out that there were three factors for this second peak: withdrawal of aged members, decline in business profits due to the reduction in landing and increase in imported seafoods, and less support and subsidies from the government owing to the rapid depression of Japan’s macro economy in the late 1980s. FCA consolidation seemed to settle down after the expiration of the supporting law in 2008. Apparently, most of the struggling small-scale FCAs had already been merged by the second peak (Sakita 2015); there are, however, still many ongoing consolidation plans. Although promoted nationwide since long, FCA consolidation’s benefits and influence have often been controversial. Practitioners have emphasized its urgent need and benefits for the sake of relieving vulnerable small-scale FCAs (e.g. Hamamoto 2004). The national government and National Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations aimed to reduce the number of FCAs to 250 by promoting consolidation. On one hand, many researchers agreed that consolidation could contribute to the fiscal restructuring of FCAs, while on the other, some argued that care needed to be taken in the implementation of large-scale consolidation because geographic dispersal is one of the fundamental features of Japanese FCAs (Kaze 2004). Delaney (2015) conducted a case study on how consolidation influenced the governmental capabilities of local fishing people who once had their own FCA. Although there were both advantages and disadvantages to large-scale FCAs vis-àvis local governance, Delaney (2015) argued that economically-driven consolidation largely overlooked the social relations, traditions, and responsibilities inherent within the small-scale FCAs. Given that the strong connection between FCAs and fishing villages has been a premise of coastal governance, including fisheries management, the recent trend of FCA consolidation forces a reconsideration of their spatial correspondence in the context of reevaluating contemporary coastal governance in Japan. The first question is: how has the spatial allocation of FCAs actually been changed through the longterm consolidation movement? As we already mentioned, consolidation inevitably increases the gap between large-scale FCAs and local fishing villages. According to Delaney (2015), the geographic and functional separation spoils the management responsibilities and social relations of the local fishing people, thus leading to the mismanagement of resources from the locals’ view and the disenfranchisement of people’s rights. However, despite the rich accumulation of case studies so far, no geographical analysis has been done on the actual change in the locations of FCAs throughout the nation. Generally speaking, consolidation is promoted based on a general action plan made by the prefectural government and prefectural federation of FCAs. They consider the conditions of the fishing industry and FCAs of the prefecture to eventually achieve an optimal state of FCA. Therefore, its different

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trajectories should be observed not only in individual cases but also in prefectures on a larger scale. The second question is: how are the different phases of FCA consolidation in different regions empirically observed from the field? Prefectural action plans are not the only factor in determining the method of consolidation. They also strongly depend on the reaction of, the response from, and the relationship between FCAs. However, we cannot investigate all of the 900-plus FCAs in 40 prefectures—that is beyond the scope of a single chapter. Nonetheless, it is important to examine at least some of the cases to understand that the current situations of Japanese FCAs are not the same, but varied in “an era of consolidation” (Delaney 2015).

2 Methods 2.1 Data Collection and Analysis on the Spatial Allocation of FCAs The target of analysis is the coastal FCAs that dominate the local fisheries management in Japan. Our data collection followed the procedures listed below. First, we collected the locations of coastal FCAs in 1961 from the “Fisheries Cooperative Associations Regional Statistics” (Gyogyo kyodo kumiai chiiki-betsu toukei: Regional Statistics) published in 1961. It is the oldest available source of statistics for Japanese FCAs, though there is a gap of 13 years after the “Fisheries Cooperatives Act” in 1948. Second, the editions of the “Fisheries Cooperatives Annual Report” (Suisangyo kyodo kumiai nenji houkoku: Annual Reports) were used for clarifying quantitative changes in FCAs from 1972 to 2017. According to each prefecture as of each fiscal year-end, this report includes the numbers of both FCAs and decreases listed by reasons of either consolidation, transfer, or dissolution. Unfortunately, specific situations, such as which FCAs merged or dissolved, could not be identified from this report. Third, based on those statistics, we sent requests to the fisheries division of the prefectures that have jurisdiction over coastal FCAs to provide information about years of establishment or consolidation regarding existing FCAs in July 2017. There are 40 prefectures with coastal FCAs in Japan. Among these, we excluded Okinawa and Shiga. As of 1961, when “Regional Statistics” surveyed, Okinawa had not yet returned to Japan. Shiga, on the other hand, has the largest freshwater lake in Japan but there are no fisheries operations by the sea, even though its FCAs are categorized as coastal FCAs statistically. Finally, the analysis focused on 31 prefectures out of the 38 that responded to our request (Fig. 2). “Regional Statistics” includes FCAs’ addresses but does not indicate their exact locations on a map. Therefore, we estimated the locations of 2,956 FCAs in 1961 according to the names of the regions and villages in the addresses provided and the locations of fishing ports these FCAs used. We identified the exact locations of 871 FCAs as of 2017 from the data provided by the 31 targeted prefectures and websites

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1: Hokkaido 2: Aomori 3: Iwate 4: Miyagi 5: Akita 6: Yamagata 7: Fukushima 8: Ibaraki 9: Chiba 10: Tokyo 11: Kanagawa 12: Niigata 13: Toyama 14: Ishikawa 23 25 24 26

1

2 5 12 6

14 15 2219

29

4 7 8

13

9

10 17 18 16 11 21 20

27

28

3

30 31 32

33

34 36

ea

dS

lan

In eto

S

35 37

15: Fukui 16: Shizuoka 17: Aichi 18: Mie 19: Kyoto 20: Wakayama 21: Osaka 22: Hyogo 23: Tottori 24: Shimane 25: Yamaguchi 26: Fukuoka 27: Saga 28: Nagasaki 29: Kumamoto 30: Oita 31: Miyazaki 32: Kagoshima

38

0

195 390

780 km

33: Okayama 36: Ehime 34: Hiroshima 37: Tokushima 38: Kochi 35: Kagawa

Fig. 2 Areas of analysis (Prefectures that responded to our request for data are in grey color. Okinawa is excluded from the map)

of the FCAs of the other seven. The estimated or identified locations in both reference years were then plotted on Google Earth as point data, respectively. It was impossible to illustrate the exact spatial range of the FCAs’ jurisdictions in 1961 due to the data’s limitations. Instead, we attempted a spatial analysis using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). In doing so, the FCAs’ point data on Google Earth were imported into ArcGIS to conduct a fundamental analysis on

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ArcMap. The Voronoi diagrams1 in which the FCAs were located in each of the reference years were calculated and then overlaid with district boundaries to see the change in the geographic scale of fisheries management by each FCA. District boundaries were generated referring to a “fishery district” as a technical unit for some fisheries policies and statistics. It is officially defined as the hinterland of a certain fishing port that consists of fishing households sharing social relations as well as the port.

2.2 Case Analysis Besides the spatial analysis on FCAs nationwide, empirical case studies were carried out in three prefectures: Ishikawa, Hokkaido, and Wakayama (see Fig. 2). Each case study demonstrates more specific examples of the process of FCA consolidation and different aspects of its influence on the local fisheries management. We picked three different cases to emphasize the regional differences within the consolidation. First, to examine the process of a “one prefecture one FCA” regime (i.e. consolidating all FCAs into one per prefecture), we chose Ishikawa, in which all FCAs have been consolidated into one. Second, we chose Hokkaido to see why certain geographical trends of FCAs emerged within the prefecture, and as part of its background, how and why some of FCAs decided to be involved in the consolidation process. Third, we delved into the deeper micro-scale situation of the local fisheries management under a large-scale FCA in Wakayama. Our case analysis here is an omnibus of the results from different field surveys. With respect to Ishikawa, we conducted some interviews with the management authorities and FCA as part of the intensive small-scale fisheries investigation in 2017 (see Matsui 2019). For Hokkaido, we carried out a field survey twice in 2018 and 2019 by conducting an open-ended interview with the directors of three FCAs. These FCAs are not identified in this chapter because we refer to their financial information. The case of Wakayama presented here was originally taken from the results of a field survey in Kushimoto City in southern Wakayama, conducted sporadically from 2013 to 2014. We conducted semi-structured and open-ended interviews with small-scale fishers in Kushimoto (n = 101) and more structured interviews with the directors and staff of the Wakayama-higashi FCA, which governs this area. We also collected FCAs’ records, articles, and statistical data related to consolidation during each field survey.

1 The Voronoi partition is a method for tessellation of Euclid space by associating all location in the

space with the closest members of the point set with respect to the Euclidean distance (cf. Okabe et al. 2009).

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3 Spatial Allocation of FCAs and Its Transition 3.1 Changes in the Number of FCAs by Prefecture The number of FCAs in Japan drastically decreased from 2,956 in 1961 to 871 in 2017 (Table 1). In particular, decrease due to consolidation stood around 88% of the total since 1972 (Fig. 1). Then, how have FCAs been decreasing at the prefectural level? Figure 3 shows the changes in the number of FCAs between 1961 and 2017 in each prefecture. In 1961, the number was considerably large nationwide—the average was approximately 81 across 38 prefectures; 36 prefectures had more than 30 FCAs, with a few exceptions—Yamagata had 11 and Osaka 27. Nagasaki had the most (198), followed by nine prefectures that also had more than 100. In contrast, in 2017, only 12 prefectures had more than 30 FCAs and no prefecture had more than 75. The average fell to approximately 23. Over time, FCAs have decreased at different rates across prefectures. When we observe the prefectures that had more than 100 in 1961, we see that some of them still had more than 50 in 2017, while some had only one due to consolidation. Figure 4 shows the ratio indicating how many and during which period FCAs decreased in each prefecture. In Chiba, Kanagawa, and Miyazaki, the decrease almost halted after the “Law for Promotion of Fisheries Cooperative Association Amalgamation” and “Act on Support for Fisheries Cooperative Association Amalgamation” were passed until 1998. In Mie, Kyoto, Kochi, and Fukuoka, the decrease was concentrated around the “Fisheries Cooperative Association Amalgamation Promotion Act” Table 1 Number of FCAs in 38 prefectures in 1961 and in 2017 1961

2017

1961

2017

1961

2017

Total

2,956

871

Toyama

33

10

Hiroshima

90

58

Hokkaido

173

72

Ishikawa

114

1

Yamaguchi

126

13

Aomori

90

48

Fukui

70

13

Tokushima

39

33

Iwate

60

24

Shizuoka

108

17

Kagawa

73

36

Miyagi

76

8

Aichi

89

23

Ehime

104

51

Akita

44

4

Mie

137

17

Kochi

95

20

Yamagata

8

1

Kyoto

32

1

Fukuoka

81

34

Fukushima

29

4

Osaka

26

23

Saga

54

6

Ibaraki

34

10

Hyogo

92

37

Nagasaki

193

68

Chiba

119

31

Wakayama

93

21

Kumamoto

88

37

Tokyo

37

16

Tottori

39

5

Oita

71

1

Kanagawa

59

22

Shimane

98

3

Miyazaki

41

20

Niigata

84

15

Okayama

55

20

Kagoshima

102

47

Source Fisheries Cooperative Association Regional Statistics, and Fisheries Cooperative Annual Reports

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S. Sakita and A. Matsui

a. 1961

b. 2017

Number of FCAs 0 1 2 - 30 31 - 50 51 - 75 76 - 100 101-

0

195 390

780 km

Fig. 3 Number of FCAs per prefecture in 1961 and 2017 (Source Fisheries Cooperative Association Regional Statistics, and Fisheries Cooperative Annual Reports)

between 1999 and 2008. Figure 4 elucidates that, although the general trend of consolidation among prefectures largely corresponds to the trend indicated by Hokimoto (2009), each prefecture also had its own rate of FCA consolidation. As we show later, one of the reasons is that each prefectural government has implemented some policies to encourage it in consideration of the fishing industry’s conditions. Likewise, the actual effect of the national laws and policies might be different among prefectures. However, it is not possible to obtain the accurate decrease numbers and rates from the “Law for Promotion of Fisheries Cooperative Association Amalgamation” and “Act on Support for Fisheries Cooperative Association Amalgamation” periods due to the data’s limitations. Figure 5 shows the locations of the existing FCAs as of 2017 categorized by their establishment period. A large percentage of FCAs established after 1959 were assumed to be large-scale ones as a result of consolidation. However, note that some FCAs established before 1960 might have experienced consolidation too—on the map, these can be found especially in Hokkaido, Aomori, Chiba, Kanagawa, Aichi, the prefectures bordering Seto Inland Sea, and in Kyushu Island. This map also clearly visualizes that the varying progress of consolidation in each prefecture resulted in the different distribution densities of FCAs in coastal areas. Even within certain prefectures, there was a regional diversity wherein old and new FCAs coexisted.

Rethinking the State of Fisheries … 0

10

20

55 30

40

50

60

70

Hokkaido Aomori Iwate Akita Yamagata Fukushima Chiba Tokyo Kanagawa Niigata Toyama Ishikawa Fukui Shizuoka Aichi Mie Kyoto Osaka Hyogo Wakayama Tottori Shimane Okayama Hiroshima Yamaguchi Tokushima Kagawa Ehime Kochi Fukuoka Saga Nagasaki Kumamoto Oita Miyazaki Kagoshima - 1972

- 1998

- 2008

80

90

100 (%)

- 2016

Fig. 4 The percentage of FCA decrease in four time periods between 1972 and 2016 (Source Fisheries Cooperative Annual Reports. Miyagi and Ibaraki were excluded due to statistical problem)

3.2 Changes in Cover Areas of FCAs Consolidation has changed the spatial relationship between FCAs and local villages. On a national scale, the average range of cover areas increased more than three times (Table 2). The Ishikawa Prefectural FCA had the largest cover area with 2,943.6 km2 in 2017, more than twice the maximum area in 1961. In contrast, the smallest area showed no change, suggesting that some original small-scale FCAs and fishery districts still corresponded spatially. It means that, as with the temporal aspect, a regional diversity has developed wherein large-scale and small-scale FCAs coexisted. Figure 6 shows the estimated cover areas of each FCA in 1961 and 2017 using the Voronoi diagrams. Note that a cover area visualizes the spatial relationship of the nearest FCA with each fishery district, not the actual jurisdictional area of the FCA. The ranges of cover areas have expanded from 1961 to 2017 in many regions, for example, those in the western part of Hokkaido, suggesting that the distance between FCAs and local fishing communities increased. Despite that, worthy of attention on the map is that the extent of spatial expansion of cover areas is varied from prefecture

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a. Non-consolidated FCAs

0

100 200 km

b. Consolidated FCAs

Establishment period unknown –1959

0

100 200 km

Establishment period unknown 1960–1966 1967–1997 1998–2007 2008–2017

Fig. 5 Establishment periods of existing FCAs as of 2017 (Source Fisheries Cooperative Association Regional Statistics, and records provided by the fishery division of prefectures)

Table 2 Changes in estimated cover areas of FCAs in 1961 and in 2017

Average (km2 )

Maximum area (km2 )

Minimum area (km2 )

1961

39.0

1243.7

0.005

2017

132.8

2943.6

0.005

Source Fisheries Cooperative Association Regional Statistics, resources provided by the respondent prefectures, and websites of FCAs

to prefecture. Yamagata, Ishikawa, Kyoto, and Oita had only one cover area in 2017 because all FCAs were consolidated into one, while in the past, these prefectures also had a large number of small-scale FCAs. On the other hand, the size of parcels has not been changed remarkably in the Seto Inland Sea and western Kyushu. In those regions, spatial separation between FCAs and local fishing communities is not much significant so far, even though the number of FCAs has been decreased in every prefecture. It implies that the regional differences due to the varying progress of consolidation can be found not only in the spatial arrangement of FCAs themselves, but also in the spatial relationship between FCAs and local fishing communities. The results of our spatial analysis suggest that the regional context needs to be considered to examine the influence of consolidation and the local responses. One needs to pursue the factors that fostered the regional differences in the spatial allocation of FCAs and the decision-making process of the various actors. Also, case studies must be implemented to examine the relation between FCA consolidation, its

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a. 1961

0

b. 2017

125

250 km

Fig. 6 Voronoi diagrams of estimated cover areas of FCAs using the Behrmann projection (Source Fisheries Cooperative Association Regional Statistics, resources provided by the respondent prefectures, and websites of FCAs. The area of each parcel was calculated for each prefecture based on the local Geodetic Reference System [JGD 2011 Japan zone 1–12])

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different phases, and local fisheries management. In the next section, we explore three cases from different regions of Japan. Each case empirically demonstrates the current situation and our experiences to suggest some perspectives for further research on FCA consolidation.

4 Case Studies 4.1 Consolidation into a Single FCA in Ishikawa Prefecture In this section, we focus on the consolidation process in Ishikawa Prefecture, located in north-central Japan. In 2006, Ishikawa shifted to the “one prefecture one FCA” regime. Figure 7 shows the long-term change in the total number of FCAs in Ishikawa, and in the number of consolidations and dissolutions every 10 years. The total number of FCAs in Ishikawa was 129 in 1950, decreasing to 30 between 1961 and 1970. Finally, only 12 were left when they were merged into one in 2006. In particular, here we concentrate on two different periods: 1961 to 1970 when many FCAs took part in consolidation, and 2001 to 2010 when the shift to the “one prefecture one FCA” regime was implemented. The number of consolidations and dissolutions reached 80 between 1961 and 1970. It amounted to about 62% of the total number of consolidations that occurred in Ishikawa. Besides the impact of the “Law for Promotion of Fisheries Cooperative Association Amalgamation,” another support was put in place by the prefectural (FCAs) 140 120 100

Number of dissolutions Number of consolidations Number of total FCAs

80 60 40 20 0

-1 95 0 19 51 -1 96 19 0 61 -1 97 19 0 71 -1 98 19 0 81 -1 99 19 0 91 -2 00 20 0 01 -2 01 0

Fig. 7 Changes in the total number of FCAs and decreases according to reasons in Ishikawa, 1949–2010 (Source Fisheries Cooperative Association Regional Statistics, and interview)

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government to encourage FCA consolidation. According to Kaze et al. (1999), the Ishikawa prefectural government implemented a five-year plan from 1962 to 1967 to systematically promote FCA reform. Remarkably, in Ishikawa during the 1960s, the importance of the dissolution of FCAs was emphasized rather than their consolidation. The five-year plan assumed three conditions of a FCA that would be dissolved without being subject to consolidation: (1) “labor unions falling below the statutory number due to the revision of the law,” (2) “having a large amount of deficit and difficulty in reconstructing,” and (3) “being away from FCA’s business for more than one year.” In the plan, a neighboring FCA was expected to take over the area of the vulnerable one instead of consolidating it. Next, we move on to the 2000s. In the following paragraphs, we review the process of the transition to the “one prefecture one FCA” regime according to the documents edited by the consolidation promotion committee in 2003, 2005, and 2011. In 1999, the Ishikawa Prefectural Federation of FCAs decided to shift to this regime by 2008. Accordingly, the consolidation of small-scale FCAs was encouraged to make some large-scale ones a mesoscale basis for the regime. However, according to the committee’s documents, mesoscale consolidation did not progress as planned due to the “interference of the local community,” “financial and business size disparities of FCAs,” “differences in major fishery types,” etc. The situation surrounding fisheries in Ishikawa drastically changed during the 2000s. For example, the fuel cost for fishing vessels doubled between 2000 and 2006 (Hasegawa 2008). Other problems, such as aging fishing people, shortage of successors, and sluggish fish prices, also prompted calls for more efficient management and stronger organizations. In response, the consolidation promotion committee decided in 2006 to take action for the “one prefecture one FCA” regime two years ahead of the original plan. As far as the committee’s documents concluded, the shift to this regime has successfully improved the efficiency of FCA management and strengthened organizational stability. Specifically, the documents hinted that the following improvements were made: (1) control of purchase prices by unifying the fuel-oil purchase on a prefectural scale, (2) reduction in management costs by organizing base markets, and (3) stabilization of fish prices through the promotion of branding. How did the consolidation and dissolution of FCAs affect local fisheries? Figure 8 shows the spatial allocation of FCAs in Ishikawa in both 1961 and 2017. In 1961, there were 115 FCAs with a dense distribution of about one FCA per five kilometers of coastline. After the last consolidation in 2006, however, all coastal areas of Ishikawa fell under the jurisdiction of one FCA. The structure of decision-making became complicated, while practical functions were still determined by local stakeholders. After the shift to the “one prefecture one FCA” regime, the former FCAs were reorganized as branches to fill the spatial gap. A prominent example of such spatial gap is the separation between the management of common fishery rights (kyodo gyogyo ken) by the new FCA and its practical utilization by the branches as their TURF. Currently, the Ishikawa Prefectural FCA is composed of 24 branches and nine sub-branches. After the 2006 consolidation, all common fishery rights that were organized by former FCAs were reissued to the new one. However, the practical functions of these rights for securing the TURF

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a. 1961

b. 2017

Headquarter of FCA

Legends FCA Branch Sub-branch 0

5

10

20

30

40 km

Fig. 8 Spatial allocation of FCAs in Ishikawa in 1961 and in 2017 (Source Fisheries Cooperative Association Regional Statistics, and records provided by the fishery division of Ishikawa prefectural government)

are managed by the branches. Each branch office provides “exercise regulation for fishery rights” (gyogyo ken koushi kisoku) which prescribes the detailed rules of how to utilize the TURF of local villages secured by certain fishery rights. Based on such an institutional arrangement, branches of the Ishikawa Prefectural FCA are still engaging in the management of local fisheries in almost the same way as before the consolidation. More details on the issue of local fisheries management under large-scale FCAs are explored in the case of Wakayama in Sect. 4.3.

4.2 Geographical Trends and Financial Status of Consolidating FCAs in Hokkaido Prefecture In this section, we examine the regional differences in FCAs within a prefecture and then go into the background and consequences of one particular example of

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consolidation. Hokkaido is the northernmost prefecture and has the largest area at 80,000 km2 and the second-longest coastline at approximately 3,000 km. Hokkaido is known as a massive production area for primary industries, including fisheries. According to the 2018 fisheries census and the 2018 Annual Statistical Report of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Production, Hokkaido had the largest population of fishers in Japan, with 24,553 people and 19,142 vessels involved in the sector, and in 2018, it produced the largest catch, amounting to 876,500 tons, except production from inland fisheries and aquaculture. In the context of consolidation, the number of FCAs has decreased by 39% over the last half-century: from 183 in 1961 to 71 in 2016. Interestingly, the process of consolidation obviously occurred at different rates in east and west Hokkaido2 — FCAs in the east have tended to remain in their original locations since the 1960s without consolidation, while many in the west have experienced consolidation one or more times (Fig. 5). According to the staff of several FCAs, that difference is a result of the eastern FCAs operating large-scale fisheries in the Sea of Okhotsk and Pacific Ocean and/or investing in aquaculture so that they can earn enough to sustain themselves, while western FCAs are relatively small-scale due to their limited access to open seas. According to the 2013 fisheries census, there were 229 fishery management entities in the east with a total production of more than 100 million yen (3.9% of 5,815 entities), and 73 entities in the west with an equivalent production scale (1% of 7,067 entities).3 Considering this, how and what kinds of conditions have driven FCAs toward consolidation? Needless to say, there must be various reasons requiring investigation. In the following section, we particularly examine the financial status and productivity of FCAs as one of the factors that have pushed FCAs into consolidation. Here, we focus on one merged FCA located in the western part of Hokkaido as a case to examine the general background and consequences of consolidation. At first, about 20 years ago, a sub-prefectural bureau of the Hokkaido prefectural government proposed a consolidation plan for seven neighboring FCAs with the intention of improving management efficiency and stability by combining their production. However, only three out of the seven eventually participated because fund shortage became a more urgent problem for the three. Table 3 shows several indicators of the financial status of those three FCAs calculated from balance sheets one year before the consolidation. Each FCA showed similar scores: their capital adequacy ratios were extremely low (about 7%), while their debt-to-equity ratios were extremely high (about 1,450% to 1,500%), suggesting that their management conditions were severe. On the other hand, their current ratios showed relatively good scores (between 183 to 379%), possibly a result of the Fisheries Cooperative Association Law that prescribes that members of an FCA must invest a certain amount of money to maintain the cooperative’s basic functions (Ariji and Matsui 2012). However, the slump 2 We

categorized the municipalities of Hokkaido into east and west based on the locations of subprefectural bureaus as follows: West—Hidaka, Iburi, Oshima, Rumoi, Ishikari, Shiribeshi, and Hiyama; East—Nemuro, Kushiro, Tokachi, Soya, and Okhotsk. 3 The statistical data was classified according to every municipality.

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Table 3 Financial status of the FCAs before consolidation and national average in FY 2008 Capital adequacy ratio

Debt-to-equity ratio

Current ratio

Source

FCA #1

6.9

1447.7

378.8

FCA #2

6.7

1496.8

183.3

FCA balance sheet

FCA #3

6.8

1480.3

247.7

National average (profits surplus)

21.0

n.d.

126.1

National average (profits deficit)

27.4

n.d.

150.1

Ariji and Matsui (2012: 745)

Source Ariji and Matsui (2012: 745), and FCA balance sheet

in the credit business of these three FCAs proved more fatal for their sustainability as the credit business accounted for more than 90% of their capital and debt. Given that the basic functions of an FCA are to manage fishery rights and improve the management, consolidation had a great but specific impact on economic issues, while the ways of managing local fisheries have remained largely unchanged. Similar to the Ishikawa Prefectural FCA, credit, insurance, and market affairs are under the administration of the new FCA, as are the common fishery rights due to legal requirements. One of the differences is that, while the employees of the former FCAs are now working together at the new one, the former FCAs-turned-branches have no stationed staff. The practical functions of local fisheries management, such as the TURF, are left to the fishing communities of the former FCAs. The new one prescribes that the management of those rights shall be controlled by the members of each former FCA that previously managed those rights. The FCA also prescribes that three people must be elected from each area that had a former FCA as directors of the new one so that different opinions are considered equitably. These regulations enable fishers to continue utilizing their fishing grounds according to their own customary TURF even if they do not themselves officially hold the common fishery rights anymore. In this sense, as one staff member of the new FCA recalled, the consolidation was implemented almost for the sole purpose of integrating the credit business of each FCA, not as a comprehensive unification. A similar situation was observed in another FCA in western Hokkaido. It has three branches, all former FCAs, each of which still holds its agency to practically manage its fishing grounds as a TURF, even though they were consolidated into the current FCA more than 50 years ago. This implies that, generally speaking, the nexus between the original FCAs and fishing communities, both deeply rooted in traditional and historical backgrounds, often precedes the institutional changes caused by consolidation.

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4.3 Micro-Scale Circumstances of Local Fisheries Management Under a Large-Scale FCA in Wakayama Prefecture This section exemplifies how fishing communities take part in local fisheries management under a large-scale FCA. Wakayama Prefecture extends from the western to the southern coastal areas of the Kii Peninsula, the central part of Japan’s mainland. As of 2019, there were 21 FCAs in Wakayama, a 77% decrease from 1961 mostly due to consolidation. In the beginning, the number of FCAs rapidly decreased by 35% during the “first peak” (Hokimoto 2009) from 1961 to 1972. After that, they have apparently been persistent about keeping their own cooperatives, until recently. From 1972 to 2006, the number of FCAs decreased by only 7%, even though some were still small-scale and suffering from fiscal and demographic problems. However, the number fell, suddenly and sharply, in just two years—from 56 in 2006 to 22 in 2008. From the Wakayama prefectural government level, practitioners have encouraged consolidation so as to involve two or more municipalities as the groundwork for actualizing a state of “one prefecture one FCA,” like in the case of Ishikawa. This implies that there were political implications behind the scene that pushed FCAs into consolidation before the expiration of the act promoting it in 2008. The Wakayama-higashi FCA is one of the large-scale FCAs at the southern tip of the Kii Peninsula. It was established in 2008 through the consolidation of eight FCAs from Kushimoto City and two from Nachikatsuura City (Fig. 9). After the consolidation, those 10 became branches of the Wakayama-higashi FCA. A governing board of former FCA turned into a “management committee” of the branch for organizing decision-making among the corresponding local fishing communities. Under the management committee, fishers form several working groups4 for each major fishery, such as longline, lobster gillnet, skin diving, and seaweed gathering, to collectively discuss and cope with specific issues. Since the consolidation strategy was largely led by the prefectural authority with the intention to enlarge FCAs over municipalities, sometimes it inevitably connoted the micro-scale heterogeneity of coastal environments and fishing villages. The coastal environment surrounding the Wakayama-higashi FCA was remarkable for two different ecological systems that had a strong influence on the fisheries in different villages. In the eastern part, fishers’ livelihoods largely depended on spiny lobster, abalone, and seaweeds based on the relatively rich environment for coastal fisheries. In contrast, in the western part, many fishers were going offshore to catch tuna or skipjack, while fewer and fewer were engaging in inshore fishing practices such as lobster gillnet and skin diving. There was little opportunity for operating these fisheries in the west because a large part of the seabed near the shore was covered by corals, instead of benthic resources, due to higher sea temperature than in the east. Besides differences in the availability and accessibility of resources, various social 4 In

most cases, a formal working group is formed as a subordinate section, which is approved in the general meeting of FCA. The group is authorized to make some official decisions regarding its type of fishery as long as it has its own regulation and a representative(s) chosen from its members.

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Wakayama Pref.

Nachikatsuura 40km

Kii Peninsula

Kushimoto Headquarters Branches 0 1

3

6

10 km

Branches (terminated)

Fig. 9 Spatial allocation of branches of Wakayama-higashi FCA in 2014

factors such as population, leadership, business conditions, and social relationships between/within the communities affected the ways the TURF was managed by the working groups in each community (Sakita 2015, 2017). Some fishing communities have experienced consolidation multiple times since it has been encouraged by long-term policies. In the area covered by the Wakayamahigashi FCA, 16 fishing villages established their own FCAs right after the reform of the Fishery Law in 1949. However, due to the unsustainability of some of the small-scale ones, seven out of the 16 former FCAs were consolidated and renamed as branches of the Kushimoto FCA in 1965. When the second consolidation took place in 2008, the Kushimoto FCA was renamed as a branch of the Wakayamahigashi FCA, while its seven branches were dissolved. Yet, the working groups in those seven fishing villages were retained, informally active to continue their own fisheries management. The Wakayama-higashi FCA did not give them the status of official sub-sections of the cooperative and yet relied on them for management practices, especially for fisheries based on common fishery rights, by confirming and legalizing local rules through the regulations for fishery rights. However, because of the lack of comprehensive organization at the community level, such as a management committee, those working groups gradually became independent and isolated from their communities but were directly interrelated with the large-scale management committee of the Kushimoto branch. In the end, in extreme cases, some working groups found it difficult and even meaningless to

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continue managing certain fisheries as only a few fishers were involved, and some finally abandoned management practices as all fishers stopped engaging in that particular fishery. Although the absence of fishers’ eyes on coastal waters can invite trouble in the form of poaching by outsiders, insofar no alternative treatment has been adopted by the fishing community. The Wakayama-higashi FCA also had few measures to cope with such a micro-scale transition because the situation was too diverse to be covered by a large-scale FCA, and in principle, local fisheries management was still assumed to adhere to fishers’ spontaneity.

5 Conclusion This chapter shed light on the overall trend of the geographical distribution of FCAs in Japan by focusing on the consolidation movement and its influence on the way local fishing communities continue their long tradition of fisheries management. Our analysis of the distribution of FCAs highlighted that differences in the process of consolidation between and within prefectures resulted in the current spatial arrangement of FCAs in coastal areas. Consolidation is indeed one of the solutions to relieve smallscale FCAs of their financial depression and continue the current co-management systems supported by the government, FCAs, and local fishers. Generally speaking, however, FCAs in financial depression have resisted being consolidated because, for local fishers, their original FCA is more than just a management organization. Such recognition is based on the fact that an FCA originally derives from one village and has long organized local community-based fisheries management (Makino and Matsuda 2005). Even after most fishing villages lost their original character as they reduced their dependence on fisheries, FCAs have been trying to hold their position as an embodiment of local fishing villages and communities. Therefore, as we saw in the case of Hokkaido, it is common for some FCAs to decline to participate in consolidation unless they are seriously suffering from a financial crisis. When looking at the micro-scale situation, this chapter also demonstrated how FCA consolidation influenced the institution of fisheries in different phases, through brief descriptions of three cases from three regions. With this, we intended to verify that, as a consequence of the long-term consolidation movement, many FCAs became large-scale and, hence, were no longer an embodiment of the local community that had been in charge of fishery management practices. In the case of Ishikawa, shifting to the “one prefecture one FCA” regime contributed greatly toward its FCA’s business stability by integrating costs and markets under a single FCA. On the other hand, local issues such as managing the TURF that is strictly related to micro-scale fishing grounds were in the hands of branches or sub-branches but also acknowledged by the large-scale FCA. For fishing communities, however, a branch of an FCA was a liaison rather than their own organization, just to keep decision-making channels with the large-scale FCA and control some fishery rights to maintain the same TURF as before consolidation. In this sense, large-scale FCAs may underpin

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local fisheries management by providing technical and financial support and organizing the decision-making for fishing communities, but it may be difficult to expect these FCAs to conduct holistic community governance. As exemplified through these case studies, and in spite of the institutional changes implemented through consolidation, local fishing communities under the jurisdiction of large-scale FCAs were still practically in charge of managing their fisheries. Even as the original FCAs faded away, they still defined the contour, legitimacy, identity, and solidarity of fishing communities so that fishers could continue following their conventional rules and customs for local fisheries management through the TURF. However, the case of Wakayama also showed that, in certain cases, traditional fisheries management is becoming unsustainable or has already been abandoned as the number of local fishers decreases and fishers’ working groups separate from the community. This problem is more crucial in relation to common fishery rights and the TURF. These rights have been most crucial for establishing traditional community-based fisheries management by FCAs (Akimichi 2004). The rights guarantee conventional TURF so that fishers are entitled to the exclusive access to fishing resources in designated coastal areas that are inseparably linked with the indigenous territories of local villages. However, when the number of active fishers greatly decreases in a place, such exclusivity sometimes leads to contradiction when the fishers enjoying that exclusive right do not use or manage it, as if to “hollow out a fact of utilization of rights” (Ogata 2012). This emerging issue resonates with the “underuse of commons” (cf. Shimada 2015; Miyanaga and Shimada 2018), asking how to prevent resource depletion caused by the reduction or withdrawal of human intervention instead of overexploitation, which undermines people’s motivation to continue their traditional resource management systems. How do FCAs address such problems in a contemporary situation? As of 2016, there were four prefectures with only one FCA—Yamagata, Kyoto, Oita, and Ishikawa—followed by six with less than 10. In general, consolidation increases the spatial remoteness of local communities from the FCA headquarters, which also inevitably increases communication and decision-making costs. Simultaneously, as a wider area falls under the jurisdiction of a large-scale FCA, more environmental and social heterogeneity is included within its management scheme (Tanaka 2008). We argue that one of the future tasks for such vast large-scale FCAs is to develop institutional and/or practical methods for addressing local fisheries management to overcome this gap and heterogeneity in collaboration with fishing communities. On the other hand, there are still many original FCAs that have never been involved in consolidation (see Fig. 5), and those that have been but remain relatively smallscale. At least 11 prefectures had more than 30 FCAs as of 2016, while some prefectures were preparing future consolidation plans. Given that consolidation is necessary for FCAs to survive in difficult circumstances, our study suggests that a more localized, adaptive consolidation strategy be taken into account, considering the long-term consolidation movement produced different results by region. Research on FCA consolidation in Japan is still in progress. In relation to the spatial allocation of FCAs, further analysis is required to identify the variables (major

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fisheries, financial status of FCAs, demographic change, environmental and geomorphological conditions, etc.) underlying the various trends among regions. Meanwhile, as Delaney (2015) also indicated, more empirical surveys on different cases must be compiled for use in comparative research while deepening the understanding of each case study to comprehend the variety of local/regional dynamics. Furthermore, it is also important to investigate the mutual influence between FCA consolidation and municipality consolidation that was mentioned in “Changing Community Governance in the Coastal Fishing Regions”. All this work will eventually contribute to the creation of an elaborate adaptive consolidation strategy and to a better relationship between FCAs and local fisheries management.

References Akimichi T (2004) Anthropology of the commons: Culture, history, and ecology. Jinbun Shoin, Kyoto (in Japanese) Akimichi T, Ruddle K (1984) The historical development of territorial rights and fishery regulations in Okinawan inshore waters. Senri Ethnological Studies 17: 37–88 Ariji M, Matsui T (2012) Financial and business analysis of fisheries cooperatives in Japan. Nippon Suisan Gakkaishi 78: 742–748 (in Japanese with English abstract) Barret G, Okudaira T (1995) The limits of fishery cooperatives? Community development and rural depopulation in Hokkaido, Japan. Economic and Industrial Democracy 16: 201–232 Bennet A (2017) The influence of neoliberalization on the success and failure of fishing cooperatives in contemporary small-scale fishing communities: A case study from Yucatán, Mexico. Marine Policy 80: 96–106 Delaney AE (2015) Japanese fishing cooperative associations: Governance in an era of consolidation. In: Jentoft S, Chuenpagdee R (eds) Interactive governance for small-scale fisheries. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 263–280 FAO (2009) Report of the global conference on small-scale fisheries: Securing sustainable smallscale fisheries: Bringing together responsible fisheries and social development. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome Feeny D, Berkes F, McCay BJ et al (1990) The tragedy of the commons: Twenty-two years later. Human Ecology 18: 1–19 Hamamoto S (2004) Business and management of small-scale fisheries cooperative. Jpn J Fish Econ 49(2): 61–78 (in Japanese) Hasegawa K (2008) Annual fuel oil consumptions of Japanese fishing vessels. Technical Report of National Research Institute of Fisheries Engineering 30: 9–15 (in Japanese with English abstract) Hokimoto K (2009) The present situation and problems of the FCA in Japan. J Natl Fish Univ 58: 53–58 Kaze K (2004) Points to be discussed around the business activities and the form of organization of fisheries cooperatives: The aim and the methodology of the symposium. Jpn J Fish Econ 49(2): 1–8 (in Japanese) Kaze K, Miwa S, Miki N (1999) The history of fisheries in Ishikawa Prefecture. In: Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Corporative Association Ishikawa, Prefectural Federation of Marine Bank Association Ishikawa (eds) The history of fisheries in Ishikawa Prefecture. Hokkoku Shimbun, Kanazawa, pp 17–224 (in Japanese) Makino M, Matsuda H (2005) Co-management in Japanese coastal fisheries: Institutional features and transaction costs. Mar Policy 29: 441–450 Matsui A (2019) The structure of small-scale fisheries in Noto-jima Island, northcentral Japan: A livelihood portfolio approach. Jpn J Hum Geogr 71: 127–150 (in Japanese with English abstract)

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McCay BJ (1980) A fishermen’s cooperative, limited: Indigenous resource management in a complex society. Anthropol Q 53: 29–38 Miyanaga K, Shimada D (2018) ‘The tragedy of the commons’ by underuse: toward a conceptual framework based on ecosystem services and satoyama perspective. Int J Commons 12(1): 332–351 Ogata K (2012) ‘Co-’ using and management in coastal areas and the laws. In: Shimbo T, Matsumoto M (eds) The changing commons: From between field and theory. Nakanishiya Shuppan, Kyoto, pp 43–66 (in Japanese) Okabe A, Boots B, Sugihara K et al (2009) Spatial tessellations: concepts and applications of Voronoi diagrams (second edition). John Wiley & Sons, New Jersey Otsu S, Sakai S (1981) Prospect of fishing villages in 1980s based on the process of transition of fishing villages in 1970s. Bull West Jpn Fish Econ 22: 1–17 (in Japanese) Pollnac RB (1991) Social and cultural characteristics of small-scale fishery development. In: Cernea MM (ed) Putting people first: sociological variables in rural development. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 259–300 Sakita S (2015) The structure and transition of fishing ground management under a large-scale fishery cooperative: a case study of the Wakayama-higashi Fishery Cooperative. Jpn J Hum Geogr 67: 283–305 (in Japanese with English abstract) Sakita S (2017) Regional differences of the community-based management of spiny lobster gillnet fisheries in Kushimoto-cho, the southernmost of Kii Peninsula. Geogr Rev Jpn [series A] 90: 300–323 (in Japanese with English abstract) Shimada D (2015) Multi-level natural resource governance based on local community: A case study on semi-natural grassland in Tar¯oji, Nara, Japan. Int J Commons 9: 486–509 Short KM (1989) Self-management of fishing rights by Japanese cooperative associations: a case study from Hokkaido. In: Cordell J (ed) A sea of small boats. Cultural Survival, Inc., Cambridge, pp 371–387 Tanaka S (2008) A study on community-based uses and management of marine resources for reconstruction of extensive resource management: the case study of small-scale trawling fishery in Seto Inland Sea. J RegNal Fish 48(1–2): 83–101 (in Japanese with English abstract) Yabuuchi Y (1958) Ecology of fishing villages. Kokon Shoin, Tokyo (in Japanese) Yamauchi M (2004) Towards a new approach to geographical research of fishing communities. Jpn J Hum Geogr 56: 351–374 (in Japanese with English abstract)

Case Studies of Adaptive Fisheries Governance

Fisheries Resource Governance in Hyogo Seto Inland Sea: Fishers, the Government, Research Institutes, and Fishers’ Organizations Masataka Tawa

Abstract One major issue in fisheries geography in coastal regions is clarifying how various institutions and customary rules are projected onto fishing spaces. An examination of fisheries organizations and individual fishers is necessary; however, the methodology has not been fully established. This chapter discusses sustainable fisheries and environmental governance in a closed sea area, namely the Hyogo Seto Inland Sea. The standpoints of local government, fisheries organizations, research institutions, fishers, and resource governance were examined. Against the background of the current environmental issue in the Hyogo Seto Inland Sea, new types of knowledge and organizations are emerging. However, how to build sustainable relationships among various actors has yet to be explored. Keywords Hyogo Seto Inland Sea · Ohwadajuku · Productive sea · Fishery governance · Resource management

1 Introduction Resource depletion has been a critical issue in the coastal fishing grounds of Japan. Japan is a major fishing country, and spatial and resource use in its coastal areas has been practiced based on customary institutions. Currently, under the modern Fishery Law, the prefectural government, Sea-area Fisheries Adjustment Commission, Fisheries Cooperative Association (FCA), and the resource management committee under the FCA are the major organizations involved in coastal resource management (Sakita 2015). Regulations at different administrative levels have been enacted for management purposes, such as fishery rights, the fishery coordination act, fishery code, and local customs. However, fisheries geography has not paid adequate attention to the regional practice of resource management. Customary tenure and local regulations are studied in the fields of sociology and anthropology (Akimichi 1995; Jentoft M. Tawa (B) School of Humanities, Kwansei Gakuin University, Nishinomiya, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Ikeguchi et al. (eds.), Adaptive Fisheries Governance in Changing Coastal Regions in Japan, International Perspectives in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4240-8_4

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1989). In the discipline of geography, the central issue is how various regulations and customary rules manifest as the spatial organization of fishing grounds. Geographic methodology to understand how regulations are implemented at the micro-scale of individual fishers has not been fully explored. Let us now consider the fishery in Southeast Asia where research on resource management theory has been actively developed since 1980s. In Southeast Asian fisheries, resource management is one of the most advanced fields of study. Until the early 1900s, most fisheries were for subsistence purposes and there were few commercial fisheries. When the demand for fish increased or the supply ran short, fishers were able to develop new fishing grounds without any barriers (Butcher 2004). During the following decades after World War II, fishers exploited fish, shrimp, and other resources more intensively. Even after these increased fishing efforts, the acquisition of resources was openly accessible and few management regulations were applied in the region (Yamao 1997). Since the late 1940s, governments and international organizations have had a major impact on the expansion of fisheries. Until recently, unlike in the agriculture sector, the fisheries sector has been considered relatively independent from state power. Despite various regulations posed by the state, fishers had escaped control to some extent (Butcher 2004). However, since the 1990s, most fishing grounds have been developed and overfishing had worsened in many regions. Fishers were strictly restricted from moving freely between fishing grounds. Furthermore, states sought to establish legal and administrative systems to prevent the collapse of coastal resources. After various attempts at fisheries regulation, the introduction of resource-management fisheries has become a recent trend (Yamao 1997). In this context, state-led top-down management policies were criticized as they failed to incorporate the local reality of fisheries and fishers’ intentions. Thus, a community-based management system—at the opposite end of top-down management—has come to the spotlight in Southeast Asian countries since the late 1980s. Yamamoto (1994) argued that in Japan, this system corresponded to “resource management-based fisheries,” although the definition and concept had not been comprehensively described. In the 1990s, the concept of co-management that integrated bottom-up locallybased resource management and state-led top-down resource management has been taken (Wilson et al. 2003). While its definition remained unclear in Southeast Asian fisheries, it was considered an organization or institution that coordinates fishers and the state, which aims for the sustainable use of resources (Yamao 1997; Pomeroy and Viswanathan 2003). Financial support for implementing co-management was provided by international aid organizations such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Asian Development Bank, and World Bank, as well as technical aid from European countries and Japan. Clearly, co-management was established based on cooperation and power distribution through various relationships at multiple levels and scales. In the co-management scheme, the rationale for government action is at least threefold; efficiency, equity, and administrative reasons in the actions of the state and fishers’ participation are considered essential (Jentoft 1989). The appropriate

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governance for co-management has also been discussed (Pomeroy and Viswanathan 2003). In Japanese fisheries geography, the studies of the governance of social organizations in resource management are rarely found. Governance is a term used in the field of political science. Political scientist Akira Nakamura explained that governance in politics and administration does not refer to an institution, but is an attempt to create a new framework for society to build a new mechanism for promoting social management. The study of governance requires examining its transparency, accountability, participation, and equity. The use of the term “governance” points to a cooperative administration in which the state, local government, enterprises, and citizens build horizontal relationships to solve social issues (Nakamura 2004). He also criticized governance studies in Japan, which often failed to fully discuss Japanese political administration from a governance perspective, instead of presenting a theoretical review of Anglophone literature. This chapter discusses sustainable fisheries and environmental governance in a closed sea area, namely the Hyogo Seto Inland Sea. The standpoints of local government, fisheries organizations, research institutions, and fishers regarding the governance of fishery resources are examined. Against the background of the current environmental issue in the Hyogo Seto Inland Sea, new types of knowledge and organizations are emerging. However, how to build sustainable relationships between various actors has yet to be explored.

2 Fisheries in Hyogo Prefecture This section reviews the status of fisheries on the coasts of Seto Inland Sea in Hyogo Prefecture. The first subsection describes the fishing environment, and the second focuses on fishing operations.

2.1 Fisheries Environment of Hyogo Seto Inland Sea and Its Changes The waters of Hyogo Prefecture in the Seto Inland Sea are broadly divided into the Harima Pass and Osaka Bay (Fig. 1). Harima Pass is the sea surface surrounded by the mainland on the north, Shikoku in the south, Awaji Island on the east, and Shodo Island on the west. The west of Shodo Island is connected to Bisan Seto. The sea is connected to Osaka Bay through the Akashi Strait between the mainland and northern end of Awaji Island, and to Kii Channel through the Naruto Strait between the southern part of Awaji Island and the Shikoku side. The sea area is 3,426 km2 and the average water depth about 26 m. The Hyogo prefectural fishing grounds are formed on the west side along the borders of Okayama and Kagawa Prefectures,

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Fig. 1 Study area

and in the southern part of Tokushima Prefecture. The Hyogo prefectural fishing grounds occupy about 70% of the area of Harima Pass. The Ieshima Archipelago, which consists of around 40 islands, is located 18 km offshore of Himeji City. Off the southwest coast of Akashi City and northern coast of Awaji Island, a shallow shoal of sand called Shikanose covers more than 100 km2 . The depth of the water is shallow—only up to four meters. Known as a place for fish spawning, fishers have long protected this shoal carefully. On the other hand, because of its abundant resources, it has become the scene of fishing ground disputes. The Osaka Bayside is located at the eastern end of the Seto Inland Sea. The northern and eastern parts are surrounded by the mainland coasts, the western part by Awaji Island, and the southern part is connected to the Kii Channel from the Kitan Strait. The area measures approximately 1,450 km2 and the average water depth is

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28 m. The main fishing grounds of Hyogo Prefecture are in the western part of the bay off the coast of Kobe City, Akashi City, and Awaji Island. Common use of the fishing grounds with Osaka Prefecture is permitted for some fishing boats between fishers in both prefectures. In the following, the waters of Hyogo Prefecture in the Seto Inland Sea will be referred to as the Hyogo Seto Inland Sea. The Seto Inland Sea is a semi-enclosed sea area. There are many islands, straits, passes, and the bay area, and the topography is extremely diverse. There are many inflowing rivers and abundant nutrients necessary for the growth of fish, which has increased the production of various organisms. In the fertile Seto Inland Sea, sea pollution began to intensify after World War II from the middle of the 1950s; in the 1960s, the water became polluted as a result of the industrialization and prosperity of the coastal regions. In other words, the Seto Inland Sea played the role of an “industrial canal.” Few natural disasters, a warm climate, and many shallow coasts suitable for landfills positioned it as a potential industrial area (Montani 1996). In addition to landfills aimed at industrialization, landfills through the redevelopment of coastal cities and development after the enactment of the General Recreation Area Improvement Law (1987) became prominent after the mid-1980s. The outflow of domestic wastewater to the sea surface further spurred the destruction of the environment in the highly closed inner bay area. Tatara (1982) focused on the changes in sea surface fishery production in the Seto Inland Sea, and divided the period from 1955 to the 1980s into three in terms of the effects of eutrophication in the Seto Inland Sea on fisheries: (1) Before eutrophication: The period from 1955 to 1957 when the catch was stable, even though overfishing and depletion of important resources were significant. (2) Early period of eutrophication: The rapid increase in catches from 1963 to 1969 with the constant increase of eutrophication. (3) Late eutrophication era: The accelerated deterioration of water quality and eutrophication were halted from 1970 to 1977, but the pollution load on the waters was sustained. The fish catch remained low, and the fluctuation of the catch was relatively large. Following Tatara (1982), Montani (1996) called the period from 1977 to the mid-1990s after the third period “the last period of eutrophication,” the catch volume returned to the level of the first period at that time. How can we evaluate the situation after the mid-1990s until the present? In the 1960s and 1970s when eutrophication progressed, the water quality deteriorated significantly, with nearly 300 red tides occurring each year. For example, in the first half of the 1970s, as exemplified by a large red tide in 1972 that killed a large volume of farmed young yellowtail in the northern part of Harima Pass. This area was constantly characterized by a brown-red tide in summer (Tanda and Harada 2012). In response to this situation, the Seto Inland Sea Environmental Conservation Extraordinary Measures Law (Special Measures Law in 1978) was enacted in 1973 to reduce the chemical oxygen demand (COD) pollution load. Since then, regulations on the total amount of COD and nitrogen/phosphorus have been introduced, and the improvement of water quality has progressed. The occurrence of the red tide has decreased, and water transparency has been restored. On the other hand, from a fisheries standpoint, the nutrients in the seawater, especially dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN), have decreased, resulting in the fading color of farmed laver since

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the late 1990s in the eastern part of Seto Inland Sea (Tanda et al. 2014). Fishing boat catches have continued to decline since this period, and there is a concern that DIN shortages might decrease productivity in the sea area (Tanda and Harada 2013). The recent sea conditions in Hyogo Seto Inland Sea represent the state of progress in improving the water quality. From a fisheries standpoint, the period of the oligotrophic condition of fishing grounds has progressed. The Seto Inland Sea has shifted from the eutrophication era and water quality has improved. However, the former Seto Inland Sea, rich in fishery resources, has been lost. Fishers asked if the water became too clean (Tanda et al. 2014).

2.2 Fishing Operations in Hyogo Seto Inland Sea Here, I overview the status of fishing operations and the changing environment of the Seto Inland Sea and Hyogo Seto Inland Sea. As of 2016, there were 36 FCAs in the coastal areas of Hyogo Seto Inland Sea. The number of FCA decreased by about 20 in the last 10 years after consequent FCA consolidations with the declining number of fishers. By the end of 2016, the total number of fisher members was 3,759, a decrease of 1,460 over the last 10 years. Half the members were aged over 60 years. Furthermore, only six FCAs have more than 200 members. Table 1 shows the number of fishery management entities by type of fishing practice in Hyogo Seto Inland Sea based on the 2013 fishery census. Among the 2,793 fishers, the majority operated small trawling nets (993 entities: 35.6%). Major target species were sea bream, flounders, shrimp, octopus, and conger eel, meaning operations were possible all year. The second largest number operated a boat seine (243 entities, 8.7%), which targeted sand lance (Ammodytes personatusin) in spring and anchovies from the spring to fall. Angler fishing included longline fishing (63 entities: 2.3%), trolling (168 entities: 6.0%), and other single line fishing (304 entities) that targeted sea bream, sea bass, flounder, and other species. In longline operations, rockfish, scorpionfish, conger eel, and pike conger are stable catches. The major target fish for trolling are Spanish mackerel and hairtail. The annual production of these fishing operations was largest in the late 1960s with about 80,000 t, and 70,000–60,000 t after the 1980s. This declined in the late 1990s to less than 60,000 t. Recently, production totals approximately 40,000 t. Aquaculture production has increased in places with the boat fishing described earlier. The region has 73 oyster farmers (2.6%), 48 wakame seaweed (Undaria algae) farmers (1.7%), and 263 laver farmers (9.4%). Oyster farming started on a small scale in Sakoshi Bay and Aioi Bay in the western part of Hyogo Seto Inland Sea in the 1970s, but in recent years, the scale of each area has expanded, and Murotsu district in Tatsuno City has become a major production area as has Sakoshi and Aioi. Wakame seaweed farming is carried out mainly on the west coast of Awaji Island. The introduction of laver seaweed farming is relatively new, beginning with the start of seeding tests in the late 1960s and 1970s. It developed to supplement

Fisheries Resource Governance in Hyogo … Table 1 Number of fishery management entities by main fishery type in Hyogo Setouchi Region

77

Fishery type

Management entity

Net fishery

1,570

Small trawl

993

Gillnet

272

Boat seine

243

Small set net

49

Round haul net Others

3 10

Angling fishery

535

Trolling line

168

Longline

63

Others

304

Other fisheries

289

Shellfish and seaweed collection

110

Diving

12

Others

167

Fish and shellfish aquaculture Laver seaweed

399 263

Oyster

73

Wakame(Undaria algae)

48

Prawn

1

Other fish

11

Other shellfish Total

3 2,793

Source 2013 Fishery Census

income in the winter. As the floating method developed, the farming area expanded from offshore Kobe to the Harima Pass, and the industry became a core sector in the Hyogo Prefecture fisheries. The production in recent years is the second largest in the country after Saga Prefecture. Recently, aquaculture production has exceeded fishery production. In 2016, of the total production of fisheries (including production in the Japan Sea side) of 126,000 t, aquaculture contributed to 70,000 t and boat fishing to 43,000 t. In terms of production value in the Seto Inland Sea side, of the prefecture total of 51.1 billion yen, aquaculture contributed to 20.9 billion yen, and boat fishing to 20.6 billion yen. Since 2000, the production of sand lance, anchovies, and laver has been low, and fishery production unstable in general. Especially after 2016, the significant decline

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in the number of sand lance and octopus, and fading color of laver became critical issues. The next section examines the governance of these issues.

3 “Productive Sea” and Fishery Governance in Hyogo Seto Inland Sea 3.1 Government and Fishers’ Organizations in the Governance of a “Productive Sea” As described in the previous section, fishery production in the Hyogo Seto Inland Sea has recently declined, significantly so for sand lance, anchovies for seine boats, and octopus for small trawling operations. The fading color of laver remains an unresolved issue. It is thought that the oligotrophic condition of the water has caused this problem. Table 2 shows the environmental standard for total nitrogen and phosphorus in the seawater according to resource use as indicated by the Ministry of the Environment. Categories II, III, and IV correspond to fisheries I (various marine resources are harvested constantly), fisheries II (except for some benthic resources, various finfish are harvested), and fisheries III (specific types of resources resistant to pollution are harvested), respectively. According to Tanda and Higuchi (2017), the Harima Pass is a type II sea area, except that there are narrow areas on the coast. Both types II and III sea areas were already below the standard values in 1995. After that, the type Table 2 Environmental criteriaa of water quality corresponding to the purpose of use in the sea area Typesb

Utilization purpose

Environmental criteria Total nitrogen

Total phosphorus

I

Conservation and II, III, IV

< 0.2 mg/L

< 0.02 mg/L

II

“Fishries I”c , Sea bathing

< 0.3 mg/L

< 0.03 mg/L

III

“Fisheries II”d

< 0.6 mg/L

< 0.05 mg/L

IV

“Fisheries III”e , Industrial water, “Environment conservation of natural habitat”f

< 1 mg/L

< 0.09 mg/L

Notes a The number of environment criteria in this table is annual average value b Designation of water area type is made for waters that may cause a significant increase in marine phytoplankton c “Fisheries I”: variety of fishery products are stably caught d “Fisheries II”: a lot of fishery products, mainly fish, are caught except for some bottom fish and benthos e “Fisheries III”: a particular fishery products that is resistant to contamination is mainly caught f “Environment conservation of natural habitat”: a lower limit environment where benthos can survive throughout the year Source Ministry of the Environment

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III sea area dropped below the type II standard value in 2004, and in recent years, has been approaching the type I standard value. Type II sea areas have been below the type I standard value since around 2008, except in 2011. In Osaka Bay, the total nitrogen concentration in the type II sea area may decrease below 0.2 mg/L in the future. This value indicates that most sea areas have an oligotrophic condition. The transparency of the seawater is high in Harima Pass, up to 20 m deep in some places. This is considered the level of marine parks rather than that of fishing grounds. There is no lower limit for the standard value of each type, which may have resulted in a lack of water management of fishing grounds. Researchers of the Prefectural Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries Technology Center; Fisheries Institute; and staff of the Prefectural Fisheries Division strongly advocate the concept of a “productive sea” to express a marine environment rich in fisheries resources based on their research on this environment. The concept presents an alternative value of the sea as a “clean sea,” which emphasizes transparency. When they have the opportunity to attend and give talks at the fishers’ meetings, they often discuss the “productive sea.” Fishers share the mission to regain the “productive sea” and have begun discussing what should be done. The federation of the FCA in Hyogo, which consists of 37 FCAs in the prefecture, published a brochure with a cartoon for citizens to advocate the “productive sea.” The brochure was entitled, “Restore the productive sea in the Seto Inland Sea! Warning to the nutrient-poor Seto Inland Sea.” The main character is a junior high school boy, whose father is a fisherman, and his friend, a female junior high school girl. Her uncle works at the Fisheries Research Institute in the neighboring town. The boy argues with his father, who is frustrated with the poor sand lance catch, and wants to know what is going on in the sea. He and she visit the Fisheries Research Institute and listen to her uncle talk about the state of the sea, which makes them think about the future of the fishery. Referring to the fisher’s perception that many resources including sand lance are declining, the uncle explains that the sea lacks the nutrients needed to support these organisms. He also attributes the poor nutrients to the changing relationship between the land and water, a high level of sewage treatment, and a decrease in the inflow of sediment into the sea because of the construction of dams. He made the children aware of people’s struggle to restore the “productive sea.” One policy to restore the “productive sea” implemented drastic changes to river basin management. In January 2015, the Water and Disaster Management Bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism (MLIT) revised the Comprehensive Plan for Basin Scale Sewage Management. The plan was established by prefectures to achieve and maintain environmental standards for public water bodies based on Article 2–2 of the Sewerage Law. In addition to water quality, the revised plan emphasized the three dimensions of energy, time, and space. The energy dimension considers the use and saving of energy, the time dimension promotes midterm management policy, and the dimension of space promotes large-scale planning. The revision enabled prefectures to set targets other than water quality and environmental standards (for example, targets for water quality by season and those related to energy) as sewer managers, considering local conditions and characteristics.

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Based on the revised framework, Hyogo prefecture compiled a comprehensive sewage maintenance plan for the Harima Pass in September 2018. The plan incorporated a target to solve the problem of the fading color of farmed laver. Based on the plan, of the 24 sewage treatment centers along the coasts, three began to operate at the seasonal water quality standard—which aimed for a higher total nitrogen concentration from November 2018 to April 2019.

3.2 Governance of Fisheries Resources and Local Ecological Knowledge In the recent governance of fisheries in Hyogo Prefecture, fishers have expressed their concern based on both their traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and scientific ecological knowledge (SEK). This subsection examines two cases in which fishers expressed their concern for octopus and sand lance resource management. Hayashizaki FCA in Akashi City, major fishing operations entail using an octopus trap, hook and line fishing, small trawling, seine boats, and laver farming. The longevity of an octopus is as short as two years, and this resource fluctuates greatly. In the Akashi region, the city federation of the FCA set spawning pots on the sea bottom to restore octopus resources. However, the level of this resource remains low in common octopus grounds. Fukuyama (2018) highlights the need to make more efforts regarding resource management and proposes extending the closing period during the summer. Based on his experience, he explains that there are spring-spawning octopus and fall-spawning octopus, and the latter reaches gonad maturity in mid-August. He believes that the longer closure in summer would leave more broodstock. In addition, fishers know that the octopus grows well during the summer tides. Thus, he contends it would be better to catch the bigger octopus after the closure in August. Currently, the FCA has set no-take days for octopus in their rules. This is prohibited on Wednesdays and Sundays from June to September, and every Sunday and every other Wednesday in other periods. Fukuyama analyzed daily sales data managed by the FCA to investigate the growth of octopuses and resource management. The data include the amount and value of octopus sold by size class: small (100–200 g/individual), medium (200–600 g), large (600–1,000 g), and very large (more than 1,000 g). Fishers know that small size captured in July was born in the spring and those captured before July were born in the fall the previous year. Fukuyama paid attention to the no-take days according to the rules and bad weather. He also analyzed the growth rate in relation to the lunar calendar, because fishers believe that octopuses grow every tide in the summer. He analyzed three years of catch data by size class from 2015 to 2017, reaching the following conclusions: 1. Fishers catch the cohort born the previous fall in the early stage of the season, and the cohort born in the spring after July.

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2. After July, the growth rate of an octopus increases significantly. 3. In the years with a higher number of no-take days during the catching season of the spring-born cohort, the production value per day after the closed period was higher. Based on the analysis, Fukuyama found that increasing the number of no-take days for small octopuses would lead to the efficient use of resources. Furthermore, he confirmed that octopuses born the previous fall have long been subject to the catch since May and that this cohort gradually starts spawning from late August. Therefore, he concluded that refraining from the operation after the end of August for a certain period would ensure many octopuses were left to spawn in the fall, which would lead to the sustainable use of resources. Fukuyama has long thought that increasing the number of no-take days in the summer would achieve the goals of resource conservation and efficient use, a belief supported by a statistical data analysis. In Bouze Island, Ieshima Archipelago, 58 seine boats were in operation by 2018. The main target of seining in the spring is juvenile sand lance soon after hatching. Since the late 1970s, these fish have been caught and processed into bait for aquaculture or raw material for processed products. The price was low, but since the late 1990s, the processed product “Kugini,” a processed good boiled down in soy sauce (Fig. 2), became well known nationwide, and the fish price rose as demand increased. Despite fluctuations, an annual landing of sand lance averaged 2,900 t over 10 years until 2016. However, the fish landing decreased so significantly that it affected not only fisheries production, but also marketing and processing. Gohki Ueda is a fisher who belongs to Bouze FCA who operates a seine boat and engages in small trawling. Faced with the resource depletion of sand lance, he took the opportunity to consider how fishers could use the resource sustainably if ideal

Fig. 2 Kugini, juvenile sand lance boiled in soy sauce

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use such as “catching while enhancing” is possible and how to approach this type of use (Ueda 2018). Ueda faced a dilemma when resources depleted in 2017 and 2018. While he wanted to continue operations since the price was high, it was reasonable to shorten the operation time to conserve resources. However, in a meeting with seine boaters, he said: “Let us abandon our greed and see the future,” which eventually led to the early closing of operations. Besides sand lance, the main target for seine boats is anchovy. Anchovy resources were demonstrating a decreasing trend in Harima Pass, increasing fishers’ dependence on the sand lance to make up their household income. Ueda proposed three items that needed regulating, namely time (period), place, and marketing. Regulations for the fishing season and operation time were already determined in fishers’ meetings and being complied with. He proposed to set another no-take day in the week aside from Sunday, which is currently closed. This measure reduces catching pressure and supports a more stable catch per day. Regarding the place, fewer fishing grounds are available, as the resource has been greatly depleted. This has resulted in a concentration of fishing boats in fewer places. Ueda proposes closing these places for a certain period. Sand lance grows daily after hatching. Considering the growth, the fishing grounds should be used in rotation. After a few days of closing, the catch would be larger in size, which benefits the fishers. As for marketing, the market size was larger when it was sold for aquaculture bait and processing. Once the consumer market developed, the demand for fresh, smaller fish increased. Exploiting smaller fish could lead to the collapse of resources. He considers it necessary for the marketing sector and consumers to share the value of the supply of larger fish to conserve resources. He also pays attention to the movement to restore the “productive sea.” Fishers need to discuss restoration practices with citizens. Furthermore, he said that “fishers can talk about the seascape they see, the changing condition of the sea, and the fish species they catch to increase citizens’ awareness of the status and critical issues to be solved.” The abovementioned claims by fishers were made possible through the support of “Ohwadajuku,” an educational institution for fishers established by Hyogo Prefecture to develop the leaders of the fishing villages. The next section describes the establishment and operation of Ohwadajuku and discusses its role in the learning process of young fishers.

4 Organization of Ohwadajuku in the Fisheries in Hyogo Prefecture In Hyogo Prefecture, the development of young fishers started declining from the 1970s. In that period, as the leaders who had initiatives in the local fisheries aged, the perception gap in terms of fishery management began emerging with the young

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generation. As the Japanese fish market had shifted to an import-dependent structure under globalization, the prices of fish constantly stagnated, and the income of fishers declined. To sustain the fisheries in these circumstances, it was vital to support the development of leaders in fisheries organizations. Based on this recognition, the director of the Bureau of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, Department of Agricultural and Environmental policy, Hyogo Prefecture and president of the prefectural federation of the FCAs held a conference to establish an educational institution for the fishing industry. The aim of the institution was to empower young fishers who could lead their organization to adapt to a rapidly changing social structure and standards of economic value. After the conference, the “committee for the planning of Ohwadajuku” was organized to develop a conceptual plan for the establishment of the institution. The plan was examined by the board of the prefectural federation of FCAs. It was then decided to launch the Ohwadajuku. Simultaneously, the committee was renamed as the “Board of Ohwadajuku Promotion.” They also confirmed that the Hyogo Prefecture Fisheries Promotion Foundation (HPFPF) was to be in charge of the recruitment of students and lecturers, while the prefectural federation of FCAs was responsible for the selection of students and assignment of lecturers, contents of the curriculum, and preparation for the ceremony (Hyogo Prefecture Fisheries Promotion Foundation 2015). The momentum of the launch of Ohwadajuku cannot be fully understood without the leading fishers aged in their late 40s to early 50s in 2000. They participated in the presidency of FCAs or Area Fisheries Coordinating Committees to find a way to build a new network among young fishers under their leadership. The launch of Ohwadajuku was confirmed in September 2005 to develop successors of the fisheries and leaders of the fishing villages. The statement of establishment included the following: (1) Fishers are required to comprehend the social trend of the times. (2) While the national government promoted food self-sufficiency, the constant inertia of fish prices due to increased imports of fishery production under economic globalization negatively impacted FCA organizations. (3) It is vital to establish a long-standing, safe, and secure industrial structure by recruiting capable successors who lead the next generation so that the fishing industry carries out its role as a food supplier. Ohwadajuku officially launched on October 6, 2005. Management tasks were performed by the staff of the HPFPF, as the office of Ohwadajuku was set up in the HPFPF. The HPFPF provided about 2,500 thousand yen annually as a budget for the management of Ohwadajuku. The idea of Ohwadajuku is twofold. It aims to (1) build capacity to adapt to changing the social structure and take wise and responsible actions in accordance with the situation; and (2) achieve expertise and techniques, and develop rational thinking to identify and solve a problem spontaneously. The training program of Ohwadajuku was constructed based on these ideas. The number of applicants was limited to between five and seven people per year, and the registration term lasts from one and a half to two years in principle. This small but capable policy has contributed to the long-sustained operation of the institution, which celebrated its 14th anniversary in 2019.

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There are some criteria for enrollment. For fishers, the applicant must be aged less than 45 years and have more than 10 years of experience in fisheries. For someone working in an FCA or related entity, the applicant must be aged less than 45 years and have more than 10 years of experience in that work. Furthermore, the person must be recommended by a representative of a fishery-related organization. From the beginning, the institution has had a system to open its doors not only to fishers, but also to staff in various fisheries organizations. The registration term for graduation is two years, which can be extended by one more year. It is beneficial for fishers engaged in fisheries with a long working season such as laver or oyster farming. When someone wants to apply, that person must first undergo an interview with staff of the office of Ohwadajuku and HPFPF to confirm how the applicant wants to enroll in the institution and how he/she will attend classes. Then, a final examination is performed by the Ohwadajuku management committee (a president of the prefectural federation of FCAs is assigned to the chairman) to decide whether they approve the enrollment. Ohwadajuku adopted a credit-based system. The curriculum consists of four categories: “basic compulsory” (one or two credits), “basic elective” (one credit), “advanced compulsory” (five credits), and “advanced elective” (one credit). Students must earn 15 credits from the “advanced elective” category and five from the other categories to obtain the 30 credits required for graduation. The subjects include lectures by experts, similar to those provided in other schools, various lectures considered certificate lectures, “learning” by attending a symposium, and practical on-site training either in or out of the prefecture. After completing these subjects, the office examines the reports submitted by students and approves the credit(s). More than 20 subjects are available in the annual curriculum so that students can take appropriate classes. Since the students come from different places in the prefecture, the usual lectures and training take place at the facilities located in Akashi City, as close as possible to the Prefectural Fisheries Center. Before graduation, students write a graduation paper on a research theme based on what they have learned and experienced as a fisher, and a problem identified in each fishing district. Staff from the fishery division of the prefectural government are involved as supervisors to advise students. Initially, the supervisor’s role was only to take care of writing the graduation paper. Now, however, supervisors are assigned to students as soon as they enroll, and with some assistance from the fishery division, support their students in writing the paper. They also help with diverse issues such as the student’s daily fishing operations or everyday life. Students then report their achievements at the graduation paper presentation held from late August to late September. Most papers are written based on students’ experience in their own fishing district or organizations with a specific interest in the results of newly introduced fisheries or aquaculture, problems regarding fish consumption and distribution, resource management, branding of fish products, activities to promote a diet rich in fish, problems regarding fuel, or mutual-aid projects for fishers (Tawa 2010). The two pieces of research by fishers mentioned earlier in this chapter were reported at the presentations for the 2018 fiscal year.

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Every year at the presentations, more than 50 people from Ohwadajuku, the public sector, FCAs, related organizations, and alumni participate in lively discussions. The graduation papers are finally edited as the proceedings and published by the HPFPF every year. The two papers mentioned above (Fukuyama 2018; Ueda 2018) were included in the proceedings in 2018. In total, 50 students had graduated from Ohwadajuku by October 2016, and of these, 23 took up the posts as FCA president, director, or manager while participating in the activities of the youth group. When we conducted the survey, some students had already resigned from their posts as its tenure had expired. In general, approximately 30 people who graduated from Ohwadajuku are playing an important role as leaders of the local fisheries and villages. Fig. 3 shows the composition of Ohwadajuku (Tawa et al. 2017). The Ohwadajuku system was constructed by the governor and fishery division of the prefecture and president of the prefectural federation of FCAs. The HPFPF, which houses the Ohwadajuku office, also practically manages the institution. The office plays the roles of coordinator and facilitator to organize Ohwadajuku in cooperation with the prefectural federation of FCAs. Lectures for students are presented by staff of the fishery division and related organizations, researchers, or teaching staff of universities. Students acquire “knowledge,” which is conveyed to the local areas and/or FCAs and sometimes spread over several areas. These aspects can be considered as the emergence of fishers’ new governance. Researchers at universities or other institutions are then expected to examine and analyze every activity of Ohwadajuku. FIshery Fishery sector and fishers in Hyogo Pref. Promotersof of“Ohwadajuku” “Owadajuku” Promoters President of prefectural federation of FCAs Governor

Wisdomof of“Ohwadajuku” “Owadajuku” Wisdom Steerersof of“Ohwadajuku” “Owadajuku” Steerers

Prefectural fishery office Fishery related organization and company Research institute

Citizens

Fishery promotion fund Prefectural federation of FCAs Steering committee

“Owadajuku” “Ohwadajuku” Young fishers

Recorder of “Ohwadajuku” University, etc.

Region, FCA, Fishers Committee of young fishers, Woman’ s club

Fig. 3 Schematic chart of organizations involved in Ohwadajuku (Source Interview by the author)

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Fig. 3 includes citizens as a component, because it is necessary to build a relationship between the fishers/fishery-related people, and other citizens to consider the governance of coastal fisheries. Nevertheless, various interactions have already been implemented. However, measures that enable building a concrete relationship with citizens have not yet been incorporated into the Ohwadajuku’s framework.

5 Conclusion Ohwadajuku is finally being appreciated for its contribution to the fisheries of Hyogo Prefecture. One fundamental idea was to initially develop competent human resources while considering the whole fisheries society. According to the interview, for students, Ohwadajuku offers a “place for study” beyond their respective fishing places, and enables them to facilitate relationships with various people across the scale of fishing villages and different fishing styles. These networks bridge fishing communities, which are likely a closed society, and allow the fishers to exchange straightforward ideas. Furthermore, fishery-related organizations and administrative institutions such as the fishery division of the prefecture strengthen their relationship with fishers while supporting the interaction among them. The emergence of new fisheries governance is expected in this context. To sustain the institution of Ohwadajuku, continuous efforts must be made with the cooperation of fishers, FCAs, the fishery division of the prefecture, prefectural federation of FCAs, fishery-related organizations such as HPFPF, and the academic society. Hopefully, this will lead to the emergence of new relationships as bottom-up governance. Each stakeholder has already recognized the value of this. However, one major task is to determine how to foster a connection with citizens. We need to discuss the framework to involve citizens in the process of building fisheries and environmental policies. One way is to reduce the gap between coastal fisheries in practice and “Satoumi” (Yanagi 2006) from citizens’ viewpoint. Citizens live on the land and usually perceive the sea only through activities such as cleaning the beach or observing living things, which take place in the near-shore as the buffer zone. How can they perceive the “offshore sea” fishing grounds? This is vital in fueling action to retrieve the “productive sea.” On the other hand, fishers are also citizens who live their daily lives on land. Fishers should also make efforts to increase citizens’ awareness of the sea environment. To do so, it is important to build social consensus among stakeholders regarding the desirable state for Hyogo Seto Inland Sea. To conclude this chapter, let us reflect on our position as fisheries geographers. It is our challenge to examine how to situate the governance study within fisheries geography. We need to examine how we establish new research methodology while comparing and discussing governance studies in other disciplines. On the other hand, when we focus on the issue of fishing grounds, this includes a scale issue, which is unique to geography. Are the fishing grounds referred to in this chapter matter within closed water, or in the eastern part of Seto Inland Sea, or in more limited water such

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as Hyogo Seto Inland Sea? Fisheries geographers need to develop a comprehensive framework to provide information on the issue with fishers’ viewpoint in mind.

References Akimichi T (1995) Cultural history of the territories: resources in the sea, the mountain and the river and folk societies. Shogakukan, Tokyo (in Japanese) Butcher JG (2004) The closing of the frontier: A history of the marine fisheries of Southeast Asia c. 1850–2000. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapole Fukuyama T (2018) Current situation and future of Akashi-Dako. In: Hyogo Prefecture Fisheries Promotion Foundation (ed) Graduate papers of Ohwadajuku in Heisei 30. Hyogo Prefecture Fisheries Promotion Foundation, Akashi, pp 1–9 (in Japanese) Hyogo Prefecture (2018) Outline of the changes in the general plan for sewage improvement in catchment basin of Harima-Nada. https://web.pref.hyogo.lg.jp/ks21/documents/gaiyouban.pdf. Accessed 14 Mar 2019 (in Japanese) Hyogo Prefecture Fisheries Promotion Foundation (ed) (2015) 10th anniversary issue of foundation of Ohwadajuku. Hyogo Prefecture Fisheries Promotion Foundation, Akashi (in Japanese) Jentoft S (1989) Fisheries co-management: Delegating government responsibility to fishermen’s organizations. Mar Policy 13(2): 137–154 Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (1971) Environmental criteria regarding water pollution. https://www.env.go.jp/kijun/mizu.html. Accessed 15 July 2019 (in Japanese) Montani S (1996) Interaction between environment and fisheries in Seto Inland Sea. In: Okaichi T, Komori S, Nakanishi H (eds) Bioresources and environment of Seto Inland Sea: For its future. Kouseisha Kouseikaku, Tokyo, pp 1–40 (in Japanese) Nakamura A (2004) Three forms of administration, public administration and “governance.” Jpn Soc Public Adm 39: 2–25 (in Japanese) Pomeroy RS, Viswanathan K (2003) Experiences with fisheries co-management in Southeast Asia and Bangladesh. In: Wilson DC, Nielsen JR, Degnbol P (eds) The fisheries co-management experience: Accomplishments, challenges and prospects. Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, pp 99– 117 Sakita S (2015) The structure and transition of fishing ground management under a large-scale fishery cooperative: A case study of the Wakayama-Higashi Fishery Cooperative. Jpn J Hum Geogr 67: 283–305 (in Japanese with English abstract) Tanda M, Akashige S, Ariyama H et al (2014) Nutrient environment and fisheries in the Seto Inland Sea. J Fish Technol 7(1): 37–46 (in Japanese with English abstract) Tanda M, Harada K (2012) Nutrient environment and Fishery Production in Harima-nada, Eastern Seto Inland Sea, Japan. Aquabiology 34(2): 132–141 (in Japanese with English abstract) Tanda M, Harada K (2013) Action to improve present conditions and that of nutrient environment and future problem in the eastern Seto Inland Sea. Aquabiology 35(2): 116–124 (in Japanese with English abstract) Tanda M, Higuchi K (2017) Management plan of nutrient salts of the sea and rich fishery production. Aquabiology 39(6): 579–585 (in Japanese with English abstract) Tatara K (1982) Influence of eutrophication on finfish fisheries. In: The Japanese Society of Fisheries Science (ed) Biological indicators and eutrophication in coastal water. Kouseisha Kouseikaku, Tokyo, pp 123–147 (in Japanese) Tawa M (2010) Organization and operation of Ohwadajuku, the educational institute for young fishers, in Hyogo Prefecture. Mon J Fish Fish Coop 573: 24–29 (in Japanese) Tawa M, Nishizume M, Ebisumoto H (2017) “Ohwadajuku”, a private class for fishers, in Hyogo Prefecture. J RegNal Fish 57(3): 17–27 (in Japanese with English abstract)

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Ueda G (2018) Discussion of the sandeel fishery. In: Hyogo Prefecture Fisheries Promotion Foundation (ed) Graduate papers of Ohwadajuku in Heisei 30. Hyogo Prefecture Fisheries Promotion Foundation, Akashi, pp 10–17 (in Japanese) Wilson DC, Nielsen JR, Degnbol P (eds) (2003) The fisheries co-management experience: Accomplishments, challenges and prospects, Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht Yamao M (1997) New phase and trends of coastal fisheries management in Southeast Asia. J RegNal Fish 37(3): 361–376 (in Japanese) Yamamoto T (1994) Instruction of terminology for fisheries management. In: Yamamoto T, Shindo S (eds) Fisheries management in the world. Overseas Fishery Cooperation Foundation of Japan, Tokyo, pp 5–10 (in Japanese) Yanagi T (2006) Theory of Satoumi. Koseisha Koseikaku, Tokyo (in Japanese)

Fishery Activities in Response to the Rapid Decline of the Herring Catch in Hokkaido Ayumi Hattori

Abstract Historically, fishers, who work in nature, have encountered unexpected poor catches sometimes. What measures could they take in response to a poor catch? This chapter examines the drastic decline in the volume of the herring catch in Hokkaido and how the community, fishing operators, and laborers attempted to cope with it. To mitigate the effects of declining catch volumes, herring fishing operators looked to alternative activities. For instance, they actively engaged in catching other types of fishes and operated side businesses. When the herring catch completely failed in their fishing grounds, they went to purchase fresh herring in the places where it could still be caught and brought it back for processing. In addition, in the herring fishing areas, the fisheries experimental stations, Fisheries Cooperative Associations (FCAs), and the municipalities took various measures to counter the effects of the dwindling catch. At the same time, migrant workers switched to other places for employment due to the northward movement of the herring fishing area and the attractive terms offered by fishing operators. Furthermore, as the volume of the herring catch declined, workers had to spend more time engaged in migrant activity every year, and they explored farther areas in search of work. Keywords Herring fishing · Hokkaido · Migrant worker

1 Introduction Hokkaido’s main industry was fishing even before the Meiji era (1868–1912). Fishing was the top-earning industry in Hokkaido until 1900 when it was surpassed by agriculture (Seki et al. 2006). In particular, herring fishing was described in the midMeiji era as “the largest fishing industry not only in Hokkaido but also in the Japanese Empire” (Fishery Department, Internal Affairs Office, Hokkaido Government 1892: 101), and its importance cannot be overlooked when studying modern Hokkaido. A. Hattori (B) Department of Japanese History and Culture, Aichi Prefectural University, Nagakute, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Ikeguchi et al. (eds.), Adaptive Fisheries Governance in Changing Coastal Regions in Japan, International Perspectives in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4240-8_5

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Fig. 1 Manufacture prices of fish in Hokkaido, 1872–1912 (Source Council for Research into Local History [ed] 1960)

In fact, in Meiji Hokkaido, about 60–70% of fishery products were derived from herring for many years (Fig. 1). Herring caught in Hokkaido was used more for making fertilizer than for human consumption, and the region’s herring products were distributed across Japan. In 1912, 15% of the catch was used for human consumption, and 85% was turned into fertilizer (Otaru Statistics and Commercial News 1914: 100–101). In the classification system based on habitat strata, herring is designated as a “floating fish,” living near the surface of the sea1 (Japan Society of Fishery Science 2002). In addition to herring, sardines, mackerel, and saury belong to the floating fish category, which are clearly associated with “regime shift” (Kawasaki 2009). Floating fish migrate within a vast area to spawn and feed, and many form shoals. Yamaguchi (1926) has shown the migratory route of spring herring by age. Spring herring migrated around Hokkaido, and when they reached maturity at the age of five to seven-and-a-half years, large schools of them would swim towards the western coast of Hokkaido for spawning from March to May (Fig. 2) . The schools of herring would swarm the coast from sunset until dawn on spring days when the sea was calm. Females would spawn eggs on seaweed at a depth of 15–30 m, and males would release sperm onto them. This is referred to as kuki. Those who remember those days recall that “at the time of kuki, the sea’s surface turned white because of the sperm, and if you put a stick through it, it would stand upright.”

1 In contrast to floating fish, “bottom feeders” (such as flounder) live at the bottom of the sea. Bottom

feeders are not good swimmers, and their movement is limited. Consequently, the stock of bottom feeders is relatively stable.

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400km

Fig. 2 Migration of herring (Source Yamaguchi 1926. Numbers show months)

During kuki, small gillnets were set up by the coast, and large set nets were set up offshore. Those involved in herring fishing were fishing operators who owned their businesses and fishers who worked as labor. As of 1908, there were 2,675 set net fishing operators, 13,294 gillnet fishing operators, and 113,458 fishers in Hokkaido (Hokkaido 1910). It required more than twenty fishing laborers to set up a single set net. Women were involved in overland transport and processing. Consequently, when there was a large catch of herring, local schools were closed, and those who could, participated in the operation. Because of the fishing method and the ways in which the herring were processed, the herring fishing industry required a large amount of labor. Fishing laborers came from outside the fishing area, too. Most of them were seasonal migrant workers who would work in herring fishing areas between March and May. In the areas from which many migrant workers came, their departure was synonymous with the arrival of spring. In these areas, earnings by migrant workers working in the herring fishing industry accounted for a large proportion of the income. When the herring catch was good, it was said that earnings from herring fishing during the three months from March to May would be enough to sustain a family for a year.

92

A. Hattori

However, in the twentieth century, the number of herring migrating from the south started to decline. After the 1960s, no large schools of spring herring came to the western coast of Hokkaido. The lively activities of herring fishing, which had long been synonymous with spring, could no longer be observed. How did herring fishing operators and laborers (migrant workers) respond to changes in the volume of herring catches? We will review changes in herring fishing on the western coast of Hokkaido in Sect. 2. Section 3 will examine how herring fishing operators dealt with the drastic decline in catch, focusing on the Shiribeshi region situated at the mid-point of the western coast of Hokkaido. We will then discuss the activities of migrant workers in response to decreasing catch volumes in Sect. 4.

2 Changes in Herring Fishing on the Western Coast of Hokkaido 2.1 Changes in the Volume of the Herring Catch The volume of the herring catch was not consistent across the western coast of Hokkaido. Figure 3 shows herring catches by region from 1910 to 1960. As shown in the figure, herring catches were not uniform across the western coast of Hokkaido, but varied by region, and the decrease in the catch started in the south. The period marked by low catch volumes is referred to as the “end period.” Let us outline these changes, starting in the south. Hiyama region in the southern part of Hokkaido had already seen the end period in the latter half of the 1910s. In Shiribeshi region, north of Hiyama region, the herring catch in the 1910s was extremely abundant, but it decreased drastically in the 1920s and 1930s. South Shiribeshi region entered the end period straight afterwards. On the other hand, the North Shiribeshi region still saw small volumes around 1945 and entered the end period in the latter half of the 1940s. Some Rumoi coastal areas, as well as the Rishiri and Rebun Islands, still saw some herring after the 1920s, when the catch drastically declined south of Shiribeshi. They managed to catch herring up to 1955, although the volume of the catch varied.

2.2 Changes in Herring Fishery Rights The areas where the use of set nets for catching herring was allowed were defined by the Meiji Fishery Law (enacted in 1901, implemented in 1902).2 The law also clearly stipulated that fishery rights were private rights that could be inherited, transferred, 2 The

Meiji Fishery Law classified fishery rights into four categories as follows: (1) set net fishery rights; (2) specific fishery rights; (3) aquaculture rights; and (4) exclusive fishery rights. Specific

Fishery Activities in Response to the Rapid …

93

and bought and sold (Yamada 1989). The Licensed Fishing Register recorded the information of the holders of each fishery license by the type of fishery rights the holder possessed. The location of each fishery license was shown in the Coastal Fishing Ground Plan with the type and numbers. The Coastal Fishing Ground Plan, now held by the Archives of Hokkaido, has the type and numbers marked in pencil and pen, and these entries have been modified in red. Let us now review how many herring fishery licenses were registered between 1902 and 1947 in Furuu County (“Gun”) in South Shiribeshi ([1] in Fig. 3) and Takashima County in North Shiribeshi region ([2] in Fig. 3) based on the Licensed Fishing Register (held by the Archives of Hokkaido) (Fig. 4) . Furuu County has about 40 km of coastline. Hundred and 60 herring fishery licenses, the largest number ever, were held by fishing operators in 1913, and an equal number of set nets were in place. The number of fishery licenses started to decline gradually, and in the 1920s, it plummeted. In the latter half of the 1930s, only 10 licenses remained. Furthermore, the holders of fishery rights were no longer (1,000ton) Rebun and Rishiri 200 100 0 1910 20 30 40 50 60 (1,000ton)

Rebun

Rumoi

200

Rishiri

100 0 1910 20 30 40 50 60 (1,000ton) N.Shiribeshi 200

Rumoi

100 0 1910 20 30 40 50 60 (1,000ton) S.Shiribeshi N.Shiribeshi 200 100

S.Shiribeshi 1

2

0 1910 20 30 40 50 60 (1,000ton) Hiyama 200 100

N

Hiyama

0 1910 20 30 40 50 60

0

50

100km

1: Furuu County 2: Takashima County ↓: end period

Fig. 3 Fluctuation of herring catch in Hokkaido, 1910–1960 (Source Imada 1986) (Modified from Hattori 2019)

fishery rights concerned beach seines, boat seines, etc. Exclusive rights were area-based rights concerning all coastal fisheries within the area.

94

A. Hattori

180

Herring fishery rights

160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 1902

1907

1912

1917

1922

Furuu County (S.Shiribeshi)

1927

1932

1937

1942

1947 Year

Takashima County (N.Shribeshi)

Fig. 4 Change in the number of herring fishery rights in Furuu County and Takashima County, 1902–1947 (Source The Licensed Fishing Register in Furuu County, 1911–1947 and the Licensed Fishing Register in Takashima County,1911–1951 [held by the Archives of Hokkaido])

individual fishing operators but bodies such as the Kamoenai Fisheries Cooperative Association (FCA) and the Joint Fishery Company, which were run by fishing operators. In contrast, Takashima County in the North Shiribeshi region has about 15 km of coastline. In Takashima County, a maximum of 63 fishery licenses were held, and set nets were in place between 1917 and 1921. After that, while there was a slight decline, the area maintained a stable number of herring fishery licenses until 1947.

3 Mitigation Measures Taken by Herring Fishing Operators in Response to the Drastic Decline in Catch 3.1 The First Poor Catch in Shiribeshi Region (1930) In 1930, the Shiribeshi region saw a very poor catch for the first time (Fig. 5). Prior to 1930, more than 90,000 tons of herring were caught every year in Shiribeshi, and the region was deemed to be a major herring fishing ground in Hokkaido. However, in 1930, for the first time in history, the Shiribeshi region saw a very poor herring catch. The total catch was merely 68 tons, a shocking decline to 0.051% of the previous year’s catch. The people in Shiribeshi did not expect a poor herring catch in 1930; rather, they expected a good one. Fishing operators were prepared for the fishing season, and

Fishery Activities in Response to the Rapid …

95

(1,000ton) 1,000 Hokkaido

Herring catch

800

Shiribeshi

600 400 200 0 1887

1897

1907

1917

1927

1937

1947

1955 Year

Fig. 5 Fluctuation of herring catch in Hokkaido and Shiribeshi County, 1887–1955 (Source The Prefectural Fisheries Experimental Station of Hokkaido [1956]) (Modified from Hattori 2019)

successive waves of migrant workers were arriving. The local newspaper (Otaru Times) carried predictions of a good catch and conveyed the general expectations about the fishing season which would last until April 15, 1930.3 However, as April 15, 1930, approached, the newspapers started to carry news of a failed catch, surveys of fishing stocks, and responses to the poor catch every day. In other words, what the newspapers reported significantly changed. While under normal circumstances herring fishing would continue until mid-May, it was decided that all herring fishing would be called off on as early as April 20, 1930. The numbers of the unemployed rose, and meetings to discuss how to deal with the meagre herring catch were held across the region. One example of the countermeasures that were taken was the giving out of grants or provisions of surplus rice by the FCAs, the Shiribeshi sub-prefectural office, and the Hokkaido government. In stark contrast to the misery of the Shiribeshi region, Rumoi region saw a very good catch in the same year. There were many newspaper articles on the prosperity that the northern part of Rumoi region had achieved that year because of the good catch. A newspaper from Akita Prefecture (Akita Sakigake Shimpo), an area that provided many migrant workers to the herring fishing industry, reported the poor catch in the Shiribeshi region and the good catch in the Rumoi region at the same time. Since not all herring fishing areas in Hokkaido saw a poor catch in 1930, the mitigation measures were mainly focused in the Shiribeshi region. However, this observation is based on an overview of Hokkaido, and the situation was probably very different for the fishing operators in the Shiribeshi region.

3 The

herring fishing industry in Hokkaido divided the fishing season into five periods. On the western coast, the first (from the first day of the fishing season to April 15), the second (from April 16 to April 30), and the third (May) periods were the major fishing seasons. At the end of each period, the current status and forecast for the next period were published.

96

A. Hattori

3.2 Herring Fishing Operators Preparing for Poor Catches 3.2.1

Combined Fishing

What did fishing operators do to cope with poor catches? Let us now examine the case of the Minami family, a fishing operator family, in the Takashima County area of Shiribeshi ([2] in Fig. 3). Table 1 shows income and expenditures related to herring fishing and the difference between the two incurred by the Minami family between 1915 and 1932 based on the balance sheet that summarizes the Minami family’s business finances. Herring fishing yielded a loss in nine years out of the 18 year period. In particular, the size of the losses in 1928 and 1930 was so large that the total bonuses (kuichikin) to fishing laborers that were made after the fishing season was zero yen (Table 1) Table 1 Yearly income and expenditure of the herring fishery belonging to the Minami family, 1915–1932 (JPY) Year

Income

Detailed product information Fresh herring

1915

13,289

Herring fertilizer

1,673

Expenditure Profit and loss

Other

5,109

6,508

11,342

kuichikin (bonus)

1,947 —

1916

16,722

1,046

7,450

8,226

11,852

4,870

328

1917

7,829

1,180

6,275

374

8,780

 951

173

1918

18,298

3,560

4,551

10,187

12,621

5,677

722

1919

74,103

8,138

56,700

9,264

27,739

46,364

1,475

1920

37,542

4,234

22,16

11,146

34,043

3,499

689

1921

3,862

3,024

165

673

12,096

8,233

358

1922

13,143

987

1,143

11,013

15,241

2,099

468

1923

47,781

4,505

30,097

13,179

23,651

24,130

994

1924

27,074

5,340

18,994

2,739

31,664

4,590

632

1925

50,792

1,330

38,059

11,402

39,750

11,042

1,057

1926

33,212

408

24,715

8,088

34,639

1,428

839

1927

9,504

1,539

2,187

5,778

20,616

 11,112

237

1928

2,181

1,970

0

211

11,440

 9,260

0

1929

17,159

1,004

3,691

12,464

16,636

523

418

1930

177

177

0

0

10,231

 10,055

0

1931

8,412

2,629

2,202

3,581

11,910

 3,498

140

1932

21,658

3,086

12,028

6,544

13,296

8,362

255

: amount of loss Source The Balance Sheet, 1915-1932 and Fishing Labors Kuichikin Dividend, 1916–1932(Minami family’s documents held by the Archives of Hokkaido) (Modified from Hattori 2011)

Fishery Activities in Response to the Rapid …

97

What kind of activities were carried out during the herring fishing season in a poor catch year? Table 2, based on the Minami family’s diary, shows the dates on which fishing laborers were engaged in work. Table 2 shows that, in 1928, the year of a poor catch, the number of days when workers took down fishing nets was smaller than the number of days when they set up fishing nets. This suggests that even if they had set up fishing nets, they had to take them down in the absence of a catch due to bad weather or sparse herring migration. Because of a meagre herring catch, processing work was completed in just over two days: April 12 and 13. The herring caught after April 13 was all sold fresh. The workers also spent time doing chores for the Minami family itself because they Table 2 Activity of fishing labors, 1928

Tasks

Dates worked

Ship luggage

3/10 3/20 4/21 4/22 5/1 3/19 3/20 3/22 3/24 3/25 3/26 3/27 3/28 3/29 3/31

Make nets

4/1

4/2

4/3

4/5

4/8

4/9 4/12 4/13 4/14 4/16

4/17 4/20 4/21 4/22 4/23 4/24 4/25 4/26 3/19 3/22 3/24 3/25 3/26 3/27 3/28 3/29 3/30 3/31

Get rid of snow

4/1

Set up a set net • Take down a set net

4/2

3/21 3/23 3/24 3/27 3/28 3/29 3/30 3/31 4/1 4/3

4/5

4/6

4/8

4/9 4/10 4/13 4/14 4/15 4/16

4/17 4/19 4/22

Crush herring

4/12

Cut herring

4/13

Dry herring roe

4/13

Weed the ground

4/3

4/5

Flatten the ground

4/7

4/9 4/12 4/13 4/16 4/17

Catch squid

4/26 4/27 4/28 4/29 4/30 5/1

Prepare fishing Clean house

4/6 5/2

5/4

summer 4/8 4/13 4/17 4/18 4/19 4/23 4/24 4/25 4/26 4/27 4/28 5/1 5/2 5/3

for the

4/2

Minamis’

Chop firewood Carry soil Put things away

4/2 4/15 5/3 4/16 4/17 4/18 4/20 4/21 4/22 4/24 4/25 4/26 4/27 4/28 4/29 4/30 5/1

5/2

4/14 4/18 4/19 4/23 4/24 4/25 4/26 4/27 4/28 4/30 5/4 4/29 4/30 5/1

5/3

5/5

Source The Diary, 1928 (Minami family’s documents held by the Archives of Hokkaido) Note Tasks in blue denote activities related to herring fishing. The date in bold indicates that herring has been caught (Modified from Hattori 2011)

98

A. Hattori

could not catch herring. In the end, the migrant workers, who had been exclusively engaged in herring fishing in 1928, went home on May 6, more than two weeks earlier than usual While the Minami family certainly regarded herring fishing as important, they did not see it as their sole source of income. They practiced combined fishing, i.e., they caught fishes other than herring. During the herring fishing season, ledgers, books, and bedding were carried by boat to a place about two kilometers north of Takashima, and after the herring fishing season, they relocated their base to Takashima and engaged in other types of fishing. The Minami family’s diary contains information that allows us to form a detailed picture of what was caught at specific times each year (Fig. 6). In addition to herring, they caught sardines, squid, mackerel, and salmon every year, and over the course of nine years, they caught a total of seventeen kinds of fish. From 1929 to 1932, they used a motor-powered sailing vessel that they had purchased to fish for squid, and in 1933, they set up the Shark and Walleye Pollack Fishing Department and began to fish for sharks and walleye pollack. This information shows that the Minami family

year

Jan.

Feb.

Mar.

Apr.

May

Jun.

Jul.

Aug.

1924 1927 ①

1928

⑰ ⑯ ⑤ ⑬

⑮ ⑪

⑫

② ① ⑮ ③ ⑨

1935

⑩ ①

⑩

fishing season herring fishing summer fishing autumn fishing

⑦

② ①

⑤ ⑯

1932

1934

Dec.

②

1931

1933

Nov.

⑦ ③ ⑯ ⑬ ① ⑭ ⑭ ⑥ ④ ⑥ ② ⑥ ⑦

⑰

①

1929

Sep. Oct.

① ⑯ ①

⑤ ⑦ ⑤

⑦ ⑦

② ② ⑯⑦ ③ ⑭ ⑥ ⑩ ② ⑭ ⑧ ⑥ ⑩ ⑦ ② ⑩ ⑧

① ⑫ ⑯ ⑭ ⑭

⑤

fish species ① ② ③ ④ ⑤

squid sardine marlin flounder kelp

⑥ ⑦ ⑧ ⑨ ⑩ ⑪

salmon mackerel shark saury walleye pollack sea bass

⑫ ⑬ ⑭ ⑮ ⑯ ⑰

sea bream flounder yellowtail atka mackerel tuna trout

Fig. 6 Fishery calendar of the Minami family, 1924–1935 (Source The Diary for 1924–1935 [Minami Family’s Documents held by the Archives of Hokkaido]) (Modified from Hattori 2011)

Fishery Activities in Response to the Rapid …

99

was experimenting with various alternatives in an effort to survive in the face of the failing herring catch. This effort was not limited to the Minami family. Figure 7 shows changes in the number of fishery licenses in Takashima County, and it also shows different kinds of fishery rights. Figure 8 shows the number of fishery licenses for fish other than herring held by fishing operators in Fig. 7. It shows that the number of registered Fishery rights 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 1902 herring squid

1912 sand eel

1922 trout

1932 salmon

yellowtail

1942

1951Year tuna

Japanese bitterling

flounder

mackerel

walleye pollack

sardine

Fig. 7 Change in the number of fishery rights in Takashima County, 1902–1951 (Source The Licensed Fishing Register in Takashima County, 1911–1951 [held by the Archives of Hokkaido])

30

Other fishery rights

25 20 15 10 5 0 1902

1907

1912

1917

1922

1927

1932

1937

1942

1947 1951Year

Fig. 8 Change in the number of other fishery rights that herring fishermen owned in Takashima County, 1902–1951 (Source The Licensed Fishing Register in Takashima County, 1911–1951 [held by the Archives of Hokkaido])

100

A. Hattori

fishery licenses increased in the 1920s. From 1902 to 1951, the types of other fishing rights registered by herring fishers are, in descending order, trout, sandeel, mackerel, salmon, Japanese bitterling, walleye pollack, yellowtail, tuna, squid, and flounder.

3.2.2

Public Baths and Rental Income

It was the income from their side businesses that fundamentally supported the Minami family’s attempts to engage in various types of fishing. The Minami fishing business owner’s wife started the public bath business in 1901. There were three public bathhouses in Takashima County at that time. Since the Minami family’s bathhouse was closest to the coast, many fishers used it. As it was very rare to have a bath in the family home or lodging houses at that time, there was certainly a demand for public baths. In terms of rental income, the Minami family rented accommodations to between 12 and 20 families between 1915 and 1932, which generated an average income of about 1,000 yen (or about 600,000 yen in today’s money). The income from the side businesses was relatively stable, and it has been shown that it compensated for the loss of fishing income. In other words, the Minami family, as a unit, ran a fishing operator business with the men’s fishing at the center supported by the women’s side businesses.

3.3 Consecutive Poor Catches (1935 and 1936) The volume of the herring catch in the Shiribeshi region recovered temporarily, reaching over 60,000 tons between 1931 and 1934. However, the volume in 1935 was 11 tons, and in the following year it was 53 tons, which means that there were consecutive poor catches over the course of two years. The poor catch was restricted to the Shiribeshi region in 1935, but it spread to the Ishikari region in the following year. Not only Rumoi region but the whole of the western coastal area of Hokkaido saw a very poor catch in 1936. The only places that had substantial catches were in the Soya region, including its remote islands, and Sakhalin. In what ways were changes in resources perceived and addressed in the Shiribeshi region, which saw two consecutive poor catches from 1935 to 1936? Let us examine the newspaper articles (from Otaru Times) published in the region during the period. Prior to the start of the herring fishing season in 1935, the fishing areas were lively, with a forecast of better than the average catch. The papers were reporting on communities busy with preparation for the season. However, as there was no meaningful catch by April 15, 1935, the last day of the first period, the newspaper started to report, “the poor catch is worse than in 1930,” and the tone of the reporting became pessimistic. Every day the newspaper carried reports of the poor herring catch and how migrant workers were going home earlier than planned. In 1935, only

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101

the Shiribeshi region saw a poor catch, and reports on a good catch from regions north of Shiribeshi started to arrive. Following this, seafood merchants, who were in the Shiribeshi region, moved to the Rumoi region, where there were some prospects for buying fish. For the Shiribeshi region, it was the second very poor catch since 1930, and, as such, in 1935, the fishing operators sprung into action rather than simply sinking into depression in the face of a crisis. On May 3, 1935, a conference for fishers from fishing villages with poor catches was held. They referred to the poor herring catch as a “crop failure of the sea.” In addition to representatives from affected municipalities, FCAs, and experimental fishery stations, representatives from among the fishing operators got together and adopted a petition to promote a list of remedial measures. Some fishing operators began to engage in sardine fishing. Despite various measures taken from different angles, as sardine fishing did not go well, it was difficult for fishers in the Shiribeshi region to recover from the poor herring catch in 1935. In October 1935, however, they started to prepare for the next herring fishing season. The joint fishery company provided loans to the fishing operators who were struggling to get started. The fishing operators also judged that the conditions for the next season were good based on the sea’s temperature. They decided to start preparing for the next fishing season and to apply to hire migrant herring fishing laborers at the Otaru Central Labor Exchange. The tone of the reports of the Otaru Times from January to March 1936 was such that memories of the previous year’s catch were almost wiped out. Reports on the smooth preparations for the next herring fishing season, the spring herring forecast by the experimental fisheries station, the arrival of migrant workers to Hokkaido, and the expectations of a good catch filled the newspaper. However, the expectations were not met that year either, and the Shiribeshi region saw days when no herring migrated, just as in the previous year. As April 15, 1936, approached, the newspaper reported the possibility of “the worst catch ever.” To make things even worse, in 1936, all the western coastal areas of Hokkaido, except the remote islands and Sakhalin, experienced a very poor catch. People in the regions with poor catches learned that there was a good catch in the remote islands and Sakhalin, and fishing laborers began to move to Sakhalin. It was reported that they bought fresh herring from the remote islands and Sakhalin to process in the Shiribeshi region.

3.4 Responses of Fishing Operators to Consecutive Poor Catches How did fishing operators respond to the developments in the Shiribeshi region in 1935 and 1936? Let us again focus on the Minami family as an example. The Minami family held herring fishery rights in two places in Takashima County in the Shiribeshi

102

A. Hattori

region. Let us now examine what the Minami family did in 1935 and 1936, drawing from the information in its diary. In 1935, the Minami family caught only a few herrings on March 29 and 30. They would normally have been engaged in herring fishing until mid-May, but in 1935, they stopped fishing as early as April 27 and sent fishing laborers back home on the following day. As the fishing operation was curtailed, nine out of the 60 bales of rice that had been prepared were left unused. Minami Yataro, the manager, participated in the council meeting regarding the poor catch on April 21, 1935, and the conference for fishers from fishing villages with poor catches on May 3, 1935. Despite careful preparation based on the expectation of a good catch, there was hardly any herring in 1936, just as in the previous year. The Minami family concluded that herring would not migrate to Takashima County that year, took down its nets, and left for Sakhalin to buy fresh herring on April 16, 1936. They returned to Takashima County on April 22 and the fishing laborers processed the herring, drying it and turning it to fertilizer. Then, the family again went to Sakhalin on April 24 and sold the fresh herring they had purchased unaltered. As we have seen, there was a shift from the conventional herring fishery system, in which the fishing operators fished in the areas where they held fishery rights and processed the catch, to a system in which they processed herring bought from other areas. From the Minami family’s example, it can be surmised that this shift occurred because operators could not freely enter other fishery areas. It is worth noting that the Minami family not only managed to generate a profit of about 400 yen (or about 270,000 yen in today’s money) this way but also provided alternative work opportunities for migrant workers. Sakhalin residents’ strong association with herring fishing depicted by Aida (2010) was also observed in the case of residents of the Shiribeshi coastal areas. However, the Minami family, on whom the current section focuses, was not exclusively engaged in herring fishing. From the Minami family’s actions, we can surmise that fishing operators were trying new avenues, due to the sense of crisis triggered by the poor herring catch, by actively exploring other types of fishing. They gathered in meetings with other operators to discuss how to respond and run the business collectively. This section focused on the responses of fishing operators to the drastic decline in herring catch. However, we cannot forget that there were also many other types of workers (the majority of whom were migrant workers) in the herring fishing industry. The next section examines how migrant workers responded to poor catches.

Fishery Activities in Response to the Rapid …

103

4 Changes in the Behavior of Migrant Workers in the Herring Fishing Industry Due to Changes in Resources Howell (1995) has examined how capitalism developed in 19 century Japan, focusing on herring fishing in Hokkaido. He has argued that capitalistic labor practices dehumanized migrant workers. However, it is hard not to see migrant workers as real people when examining their activities closely. Migrant workers did not stick to the same fishing operator for their entire lives, and there was fluidity in their working patterns. In other words, there was some room for migrant workers to choose where to work (although it may have been very limited). This section, therefore, examines the life of a migrant worker in the herring fishing industry. How did such a worker respond when the herring catch was poor? Let us examine the relationship between the volume of the catch and his activities. The source of our information is the Chronicle of Migrant Activity in Hokkaido by Kikuchi Kyutaro from Yamamoto County, Akita Prefecture (held by the Yoichi Fishery Museum). Kikuchi was born in Hanawakawa village, Yamamoto County, Akita Prefecture, in 1871 and married in Iwadate Village in 1906. Since 1889, he had gone to Hokkaido as a migrant worker to participate in herring fishing almost every year. He recorded the places in Hokkaido where he worked and the names of the fishing operators for whom he worked. Kikuchi began to work in Hokkaido in 1889 when he was 19 years old. His first employer was the fishing operator Seki of Bikuni County, Shiribeshi region. He went home immediately after the conclusion of herring fishing with the fishing operator Seki, and the following year, he was employed by the fishing operator Hayashi of Shiribeshi region. During his 31 years as a migrant worker, he routinely changed his place of employment, and he worked for a total of nine herring fishing operators. He worked for only one year for most of the fishing operators. There were three fishing operators for whom he worked for more than one year. The fishing operator for whom he worked for the longest time was Hayashi in Yoichi County, the last of his employers. He went to work for him from 1907 to 1919 when he stopped working in the herring fishing industry. The Chronicle of Migrant Activity in Hokkaido contains the records of migrant workers in industries other than herring fishing. Kikuchi’s life as a migrant worker can be divided into four periods based on different features (Fig. 9). Let us now examine the four periods—beginning, middle, later, and end—in chronological order. In the beginning period (1889–1902), he was engaged in “migrant activity at a single fishery” in which he went to the Shiribeshi area to work for a fishing operator and returned home as soon as the herring season ended. He engaged in this type of work from the time he was 19 years old, when he began his career as a migrant worker, until he was 32 years old. In 1894, he did not go to Hokkaido but worked in herring gillnet fishing in Yamamoto County, Akita Prefecture. Herring fishing was practiced in Akita Prefecture as late as 1894. It can be assumed that the poor herring catch in Akita Prefecture made people more dependent on migrant activity in

104

A. Hattori

beginning period

middle period

1889: Bikuni

1906: Bikuni 1903-05,1907-11: Yoichi 1907,1909-11: Kushiro

1898: Otaru

1890-92,1895-96,1898-1902: Yoichi 1893: Furuu 1908: Hiroo 1904,1906: Kameta 1910: Hakodate

H1

1894:Yamamoto

N

0

H2 H1

N

40 80km

0

40 80km

0

40 80km

end period

later period

1917-19: Yoichi

1912-16: Yoichi 1913: Kushiro

1914: Shimokita

H2

N

1916: Yamamoto 0

Herring fishery

H2

N

40 80km

other fishery

H1

home before his marriage

H2

home after his marriage

Fig. 9 Migration pattern of Kikuchi Kyutaro, 1889–1919 (Source The Chronicle of Migrant Activity in Hokkaido by Kikuchi Kyutaro [held by the Yoichi Fishery Museum]. Numbers and the place names show years and the county names that he went to) (Modified from Hattori 2019)

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Hokkaido. Kikuchi worked in herring gillnet fishing in Yamamoto County for only one year. In 1895, he went to Hokkaido and worked for the fishing operator Fukuhara in Yoichi County as a herring fishing laborer. In the middle period (1903–1911), Kikuchi returned home after working in tuna and other types of fishing after the end of herring fishing in Yoichi County. The kinds of fishing operations he worked for expanded, including other kinds of fishes besides herring. He was engaged in five kinds of fishing: herring, tuna, sardine, another type of sardine, and squid. Because of the expansion of his repertoire, we can call the middle period his “migrant activity in multiple fisheries” period. He was 33 to 41 years old during this period, which was his most productive. The “migrant activity in multiple fisheries” period resulted from the poor herring catch experienced by Fukuhara, for whom he had worked for eight years. There is no exact record of changes in the volume of Fukuhara’s catches. However, as Fukuhara transferred his fishery rights to fishing operator Koguro in 1903, it can be inferred that he had failed in the herring fishing business. Because of this, Kikuchi began to do migrant activity at other fisheries in other areas after the herring fishing season ended. As we have seen so far, Kikuchi’s work pattern changed from “migrant activity at a single fishery” to “migrant activity in multiple fisheries.” As he moved to a different herring industry in the same area, it can be speculated that apart from Fukuhara’s poor herring catch, the attractiveness of the terms of employment offered by other fishing operators (for instance, conditions of work and pay) was also a major factor that drove the change in work pattern. It seems that migrant workers switched to employers with better conditions based on information from fellow migrant workers. In the later period (1912–1916), Kikuchi’s work pattern still involved working as a migrant laborer with multiple fisheries, but, in many cases, when herring fishing ended, he returned to Akita Prefecture and then left again for other migrant activity. Let us examine his pattern of movement in 1914. He left Yamamoto County on March 1 and arrived at fishing operator Hayashi in Yoichi County on the same day. He was engaged in herring fishing with Hayashi until May 24. He returned home on May 26 and was working in squid fishing in Shimokita County, Aomori Prefecture, by July 15. However, as his father-in-law fell ill, he left Shimokita County on August 25 and returned home on August 26. He was already 43 years old then. It can be surmised that Kikuchi assumed the role of an agricultural worker due to his father-in-law’s illness in the later period. Consequently, since 1914, he returned home once at the end of May when herring fishing finished. Then he went out to work again in various fishing industries, and returned home again by September in the same year. The timing of his return suggests that Kikuchi came home to plant rice seedlings after herring fishing and to harvest rice after other fishing activities ended. During the three years of the end period (1917–1919), he went to work for Hayashi as usual but came home immediately due to his own illness. In 1919, when he was 49 years old, he decided to quit the migrant activity. The following year, he began sandfish fishing in a local area. He could still work in a fishery, but it was probably difficult for him to travel to Hokkaido to work. Although the examination above is based on a single case, that of Kikuchi, we have learned that the poor herring catch in Akita Prefecture increased dependency

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on migrant activity in Hokkaido. Furthermore, when a fishing operator met with failure, the migrant workers increased the number of places where they sought work as well as the duration of work, and their work pattern changed from “migrant activity in a single fishery” to “migrant activity in multiple fisheries.” It was said that migrant activity in the herring fishing industry would yield enough income for a year in three months if the catch was good. On the other hand, if the catch was bad, earnings after the fishing season went down, and there was hardly any income. It would have been helpful if there had been alternative sources of employment in the local area, but, because there were no local opportunities, many migrant workers chose to go to Hokkaido to engage in migrant activity in the herring fishing industry. Accordingly, Kikuchi began to work in other fishing activities in Hokkaido following the conclusion of the herring fishing season. According to interviews with migrant workers in the postwar period, they continued to engage in migrant activity in other fisheries and at construction sites after the end of the herring fishing season, and they did not go home until November when snow made migrant activity difficult. In February, they would guess the places where the herring catch was expected to be good (where they could easily earn enough income) and went to Hokkaido as migrant workers in the herring fishing industry after signing a contract. In other words, as the volume of herring catch declined, the length of migrant activity was extended, and the geographical area in which the migrant workers moved to look for work also expanded. When the herring catch began to fail completely, the factors that shaped migrant workers’ choice of where to work changed. However attractive a fishing operator’s terms of employment were, if no herring were coming to the location and there was nothing to catch, they were meaningless. Based on information from fellow migrant workers, they switched locations to areas where some herring were expected. Consequently, many fishing laborers began to work in areas farther north.

5 Conclusion This chapter has examined how those involved in herring fishing, such as fishing operators and laborers (migrant workers), responded to the drastic decline in the herring catch in Hokkaido. Herring fishing yielded a far better income than any other work if there was a good catch. On the other hand, it was also very unpredictable. The area where herring could be caught moved north, and spring herring fishing in Hokkaido finally ended in 1960. The herring fishing operators had to respond to changes in the volume of the catch. The Minami family, examined in Sect. 3, was actively engaged in types of fishing other than herring and operated side businesses. In the latter half of the 1930s, when the herring catch completely failed, they went to purchase fresh herring in places where it could still be caught and brought it back to their workshop for processing. In addition, in the herring fishing areas, the fisheries experimental stations, FCAs, and the municipalities took various measures to counter the effects of the poor catch.

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On the other hand, migrant workers switched to other places for employment due to the northward movement of the herring fishing area and the attractiveness of the terms offered by fishing operators. Migrant activity in the herring fishing industry was firmly embedded in their yearly work pattern, because it had been an important source of income in the spring for many years. Furthermore, as herring catch declined, the length of time that such workers spent engaged in migrant activity every year was extended, and the geographical area in which they moved to look for work expanded.

References Aida M (2010) Herring fishing in Sakhalin during the prewar Showa period: Centering on measures to cope with poor catches in the bay area from 1933 to 1935. In: Historical Museum of Hokkaido (ed) Modern and contemporary history of indigenous peoples and immigrants over the resources of the northern regions: Reports of joint research on northern cultures. Historical Museum of Hokkaido, Sapporo, pp 81–102 (in Japanese with English abstract) Council for Research into Local History (ed) (1960) The Japanese industrial history series 2. University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo (in Japanese) Fishery Department, Internal Affairs Office, Hokkaido Government (1892) Report on research into the fishery forecast of Hokkaido (in Japanese) Hattori A (2011) Changes in herring fishery management in the taisho and early showa era: the case of the minami family in takashima-gun, Hokkaido. Jpn J Hum Geogr 63(4):303–323 (in Japanese with English abstract) Hattori A (2019) Movement of the fishermen with the fluctuation of floating fish resources: the case of herring fishery. Hist Geogr 61(1):20–31 (in Japanese) Hokkaido (1910) The twentieth statistics by Hokkaido governmental office, Vol. 2 (promotion of industry) (in Japanese) Howell DL (1995) Capitalism from within: economy, society, and the state in a Japanese fishery. University of California Press, Berkeley Imada M (1986) The cultural history of herring: Camuitheip, the illusive herring. Kyodo Bunkasha, Sapporo (in Japanese) Japan Society of Fishery Science (ed) (2002) Dictionary of technical terms in fishery science. Koseisha Koseikaku, Tokyo (in Japanese) Kawasaki T (2009) Sardines and climate change: thinking about the future of fisheries. Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo (in Japanese) Otaru Statistics and Commercial News (ed) (1914) The compilation of statistics of Hokkaido. Otaru Statistics and Commercial News, Otaru (in Japanese) Seki H, Kuwabara M, Oba Y et al (2006) History of Hokkaido II: modern and contemporary period. Hokkaido Shinbunsha, Sapporo (in Japanese) The Prefectural Fisheries Experimental Station of Hokkaido (1956) Statistics of spring herring in Hokkaido, No. 3. (in Japanese) Yamada T (1989) Changes in herring fixed shore net fishery rights in Yoichi region: focusing on the content of the Licensed Fishing Register. The Memoirs of the Historical Museum of Hokkaido 28: 65–90 (in Japanese) Yamaguchi M (1926) Research into herring’s behavior, second book. In: The Prefectural Fisheries Experimental Station of Hokkaido (ed) The eighteenth report on fishery surveys. The Prefectural Fisheries Experimental Station of Hokkaido, Takashima (in Japanese)

Adaptive Capacity in Fishery Restoration Process at Tsunami-Affected Areas: Assets, Flexibility, and Social Organization Takafumi Yokoyama

Abstract This chapter elaborated on the restoration process of fishing villages affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 and the associated tsunami using the concept of adaptive capacity in order to consider how to clarify regional differences in terms of adaptive capacity after a tsunami. The areas studied were the Ishinomaki East Fisheries Cooperative Association (FCA), Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, and Hirota Bay FCA, Rikuzentakata City, Iwate Prefecture, Northeast Japan. In the Ishinomaki East FCA, the people that specialized in oyster farming before the earthquake prioritized rebuilding the communal oyster shucking sites. They introduced Wakame seaweed farming and shipped shelled oysters to Hokkaido. On the other hand, in Hirota Bay FCA— depending on the district— there were various aquaculture operations. Further, there were great differences in operational management style depending on the household, especially in shellfish aquaculture. Aquaculture activity resumed through the formation of collaborative operation groups using subsidies. Although the restoration processes in the two areas are different, human relationship was the common denominator that formed the basis for collective action in the fishing villages. A significant part of the collective actions and adaptive capacities, during the restoration processes, emerged from the uniqueness of the aquaculture collectives formed in each area before the earthquake and tsunami. Keywords Adaptive capacity · Fishery restoration process · Assets · Flexibility · Social organization · Aquaculture

T. Yokoyama (B) Department of Geography, Faculty of Geo-Environmental Sciences, Rissho University, Kumagaya, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Ikeguchi et al. (eds.), Adaptive Fisheries Governance in Changing Coastal Regions in Japan, International Perspectives in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4240-8_6

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1 Introduction 1.1 Background of This Study One of the characteristics of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, was the extensive tsunami damage. There were 15,897 deaths due to this disaster. The three Tohoku (northeastern part of Japan) region prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima were extensively damaged (Miyagi 60%, Iwate 29%, and Fukushima 10%).1 The coastal area of Iwate and Miyagi (located on the Pacific coast in the Tohoku region) have many coves on their ria coast and are home to many small-scale fishing villages. It is one of Japan’s top fishery area. While small-scale fisheries— primarily family-run aquaculture, gillnet, and shellfish and seaweed collection— were predominant in this area, the tsunami destroyed fishing boats and fishery-related equipment. Nine years have passed since the earthquake. Regarding daily life, there is disaster recovery public housing, and people have completed moving out of temporary housing. Considering production infrastructure, 88% of fishing port facilities and 93% of fishing boats were restored in 2018. Further, fisheries’ sales in affected areas returned to 90% of what they were in 2010.2 Reflecting on the restoration process of fishing villages on the Sanriku Coast (Pacific coast of Tohoku region) has various implications when considering the management and the institutional arrangements of small-scale coastal fisheries, which are inseparable from natural disasters. When doing so, we should note the diversity in the affected fishing villages. There are 28 Fisheries Cooperative Associations (FCAs)3 in Miyagi, and 24 in Iwate. FCAs and fishing villages differ in the type of fishery work they engage in, their economic situations, and so on. This is due to each of their locations and historical circumstances. Many studies have taken an interest in such differences in the socio-economic characteristics of fishing villages (Kawashima 2015, Vlachopoulou and Mizuta 2018, etc.). For example, the rural planning scholarship of Saio and Ohgaki (2014) had argued that FCAs’ restoration situations and the state of relaunched fishery activities are not monolithic; rather, they differ. However, when considering the restoration processes in multiple tsunami-affected areas, it is necessary to take note of the characteristics of, differences in, and similarities between restoration processes within an integrated framework. Moreover, 1 National

Police Agency (2019). Agency (2019). 3 In 2007, 33 coastal fishery FCAs came together to create the Miyagi Prefectural FCA. Kesennuma, Ishinomaki, Shiogama, and Oshika, areas that are base grounds for offshore and pelagic fishing, each have FCAs, and there are also northern, central, and southern FCAs that manage large-scale fishing port facilities. Therefore, currently, a total of eight FCAs exist in the prefecture. There were 33 Miyagi Prefectural FCA’s branches (former FCAs) first; however, after post-earthquake mergers, the number is now 28. Delaney (2015) discusses FCAs’ mergers and their influence on the local fishery. Therein, indicating the decrease in services offered to fishery operators and other reasons, she criticizes the merger of the prefecture’s FCAs as a form of neoliberal fishery policy. 2 Fisheries

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one should take into account the complexity of tsunami damage situations and the socio-economic characteristics of fishing villages.

1.2 Adaptive Capacity In this chapter, I will consider how to clarify regional differences in terms of adaptive capacity after a tsunami. Adaptive capacity has evolved within the social science fields in studying the responses of people in tropical coastal areas to climatic environmental changes. This concept has been discussed concerning responses to and recovery from climatic environmental changes, and the minimalization of their influence. Recently, Cinner et al. (2018), after reviewing existing scholarship, have argued that “adaptive capacity” comprises five areas: assets, flexibility, social organization, learning, and agency. Originally, adaptive capacity meant the availability of financial, societal, and human capital. However, in recent research, it has included in the likes of individual and group desires and abilities that connect resources to adaptive action (Cinner et al. 2018: 117). Here, I will describe the above five requirements for adaptive capacity following the explanations by Cinner et al. (2018). First, “assets” refer to the capital and goods that people facing change can access. For example, in areas where there is a change in the available types of fish, new fishing implements become necessary. Moreover, if fishing grounds are far away, then refrigeration equipment and fishing boats to access these areas are necessary. Next, “flexibility” refers to adapting to change and the diversity of strategies, as well as the readiness, seen therein. This includes, for example, fishing method choices (replacement of fish species) and other livelihood choices (tourism industry, etc.). “Social organization” refers to the social relationships between individuals and organizations that enable responses to change and the sharing of knowledge, as well as making collective action efficient. “Learning” refers to abilities and opportunities that enable people to perceive and respond to uncertainty and change in the long-term. In addition to information regarding market prices and the weather, this also includes opportunities such as education and fishers’ informal gatherings. Finally, “agency” refers to the autonomy that enables people to choose to respond to environmental change. Here, long-term efforts to construct this autonomy also emerge as a related issue. Rather than being a long-term environmental change like climate change, the tsunami damage that accompanied with the Great East Japan Earthquake was a very short-term and destructive form of environmental change. Therefore, when considering the adaptive capacity as it relates to tsunami damage, it is essential to focus on short-term responses. In other words, the way fishery activities were conducted amidst post-tsunami restricted production infrastructure. Therefore, in this chapter, I will focus primarily on assets, flexibility, and social organization.

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1.3 Objective of This Study This chapter elaborates on the restoration process of fishing villages affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake and the associated tsunami using the concept of adaptive capacity in order to consider how to clarify regional differences in terms of adaptive capacity after a tsunami. It covers the Miyagi Prefectural FCA’s Ishinomaki Eastern Branch (located in the center of the Oshika Peninsula) and the Hirota Bay FCA, located in Iwate’s city of Rikuzentakata (Fig. 1). In Miyagi, 28 FCAs engaging in the coastal fishery business have merged as the Miyagi Prefectural FCA. The former FCAs are now branches. However, for convenience, I will hereby refer to the Ishinomaki Eastern Branch as the Ishinomaki East FCA. The small fisheries in these prefectures are characterized by aquaculture taking advantage of the ria coastline. In Miyagi, primarily Nori seaweed (Pyropia), oyster a: Location N

0

c: Hirota Bay FCA

Iwate Prefecture

200km

c Rikuzentakata City

Takata

Iwate Pref.

Yonesaki

Kesen

Otomo

Miyagi Pref. Fukushima Pref.

Hirota Bay

Hirota Miyagi Prefecture 0

2km

Ishinomaki City

b: Ishinomaki East FCA

O sh

b

ika Takenohama

Makinohama

in

20km

Fukkiura

l su

0

n Pe

Sendai Bay

a

[ legends ] others wakame seaweed scallop oyster

aquaculture

Kitsunezakihama

gillnet set net collection lift net other fishery

fishery

200

Sudachi

50 5

0

2km

number of fishery households

Fig. 1 Location of Ishinomaki East FCA and Hirota Bay FCA, and number of fishery households by fishery type (Source 2008 and 2013 Fisheries Census. The pie chart on the left shows 2008, and the one on the right shows 2013)

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(Crassostrea gigas), scallop (Patinopecten yessoensis), sea squirt (Ascidiacea), Wakame seaweed (Undaria pinnatifida), and silver salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutsh) are raised. Before the tsunami, silver salmon aquaculture, conducted in northern Miyagi, had the greatest production value. This was followed by oysters, Wakame seaweed, and Nori seaweed. Aquaculture is also vibrant in Iwate. There, primarily scallops, oysters, Wakame seaweed, and Kombu seaweed (Saccharina japonica) are cultivated. Notably, Wakame seaweed has a high production value. Aquaculture aside, the collections of benthic resources of shellfish (Ezo-abalone [Haliotis discus hannai Ino], Northern sea urchin [Strongylocentrotus nudus]), and seaweed also flourish in Iwate; Iwate has the highest abalone catch volume in the Tohoku region. I engaged in on-going fieldwork in Ishinomaki East FCA since before to after the earthquake, focusing on the coastal fishery. I conducted research on the Hirota Bay FCA’s restoration process in February 2019. In both cases, I primarily interviewed fishery operators and FCA staff, and went through yearly FCA-issued reports and information such as production figures. For the Hirota Bay FCA, I also used Takano’s detailed discussion of its restoration process in the three years following the earthquake (Takano 2013). This chapter is structured as follows. First, in the next section, I will discuss coastal fishery recovery subsidies provided after the Great East Japan Earthquake. Subsequently, in the third section, I will focus on the Ishinomaki East FCA (Miyagi) and, in the fourth section, on the coastal fishery restoration process of Hirota Bay FCA (Iwate). Finally, in the fifth section, the conclusion, drawing from the restoration processes that I covered in detail in the third and fourth sections, I will discuss my findings regarding the concept of adaptive capacity.

2 Subsidies for Coastal Fishery Restoration To restore agricultural and forestry communities that were significantly damaged by the Great East Japan Earthquake, a considerable amount of public funding was allocated in the 2011 financial year (FY). The overall agricultural, forestry, and fishery budgets in the 2011 FY were as follows: April’s first supplementary budget was 381.7 billion yen, July’s second supplementary budget was 20.7 billion yen, October’s third supplementary budget was 1.1265 trillion yen, and December’s fourth supplementary budget was 163 billion yen. Of the first supplementary budget, 213.5 billion yen (56%) was allocated for fishery recovery, and 489.9 billion yen (43%) of the third supplementary budget were allocated for the same purpose. Table 1 presents a breakdown of restoration-related budget items by program. I have organized them into four stages: (I) fishery infrastructure (fishing port facilities, and so on) restoration; (II) resumption of fishery activities; (III) sustaining fishery operations, such as the supplementation of fishery insurance money and employment support for successors; and (IV) restoration of the marine product processing facilities of FCAs, marine product processing cooperatives, and so on.

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Table 1 Subsidies for coastal fishery restoration Stage a

Budget amount (billion yen) 1st supplementary budget (Apr, 2011)

3rd supplementary budget (Oct, 2011)

I Fishery infrastructure restoration (Public works)

30.8

256.8

II Resumption of fishery activities

66.4

123.8

[1] Support for restoration of fishery and aquaculture

81.8

Option A (“Ganbaru Gyogyo Fukko Shien Jigyo”)

23.8

Option B (“Ganbaru Yousyoku Fukko Shien Jigyo”)

56.6

Other

1.3

[2] Support for restoration of shared fishing boats

27.4

Option A

7.6

Option B

19.8

Option C

Remarks

Fishing port facilities, etc.

Subsidy for resuming fishery and aquaculture activities.

Expenses related to “option A” and “option B”.

12.1

Construction cost for shared fishing boat of 5 tons or less.b 11.3

Support for the reconstruction of shared fishing boats and set nets based on the plans established by FCAs.

0.8

Subsidy for introducing energy fishing equipment.

[3] Support for aquaculture restoration

26.7

10.7

Subsidy for private aquaculture facilities. c

[4] Support for fishing grounds restoration

12.3

16.8

Daily allowance for rubble removal from fishing ground (12,100 yen per day). (continued)

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Table 1 (continued) Stage a

Budget amount (billion yen) 1st supplementary budget (Apr, 2011)

Remarks

3rd supplementary budget (Oct, 2011)

[5] Support for seedling release

2.2

[6] Survey of seedling generation status

0.2

III Sustaining fishery operations

116.3

10.1

Supplementation of fishery insurance money and employment support for successors.

IV Restoration of marine product processing facilities

1.8

99.2

Subsidy for FCAs and marine product processing cooperatives.

Total

215.3

489.9

a The

budget names shown in this table were translated into English by the author for convenience to Articles 11 of Special Financial Aid for Heavy Disasters c Related to Articles 7 of Special Financial Aid for Heavy Disasters Source Website of Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. http://www.maff.go.jp/j/bud get/2011/pdf/230422_hosei.pdf, http://www.maff.go.jp/j/budget/2011/pdf/hosei3.pdf. Accessed 17 Sep 2019. Baba (2013) b Related

In the first supplementary budget, 30.8 billion yen was provided for stage I, 66.4 billion yen for stage II, 116.3 billion yen for stage III, and 1.8 billion yen for stage IV, as shown in Table 1. In the third supplementary budget, these figures were 256.8 billion yen, 123.8 billion yen, 10.1 billion yen, and 99.2 billion yen, respectively. In Table 1, Stage I (fishing port infrastructure restoration) is treated as public projects while Stage III (supplementation of fishing boat insurance, etc.) is on the other end; Stage II (funding for restarting fishery activities) has a strong influence on the relaunching of fishery activities among fishery management bodies. In the first supplementary budget, 27.4 billion yen was allocated to the restoration of the likes of fishing boats. It was assumed that they would be for shared use (Stage II—[2] in Table 1). Of this, 7.6 billion yen was provided for small boat restoration (less than five tons, unpowered, and so on) in areas designated using Act No. 150 of 1962, “Special Financial Aid for Heavy Disasters.”4 For the FCAs not covered by this act, per their plans, 19.8 billion yen was allocated for the restoration of joint use fishing boats, set nets, and other items. After the tsunami, communities were in disorder and joint use fishing boats were not purchased; therefore, fishery 4 The “Special Financial Aid for Heavy Disasters” (Act No. 150 of 1962) makes it possible to access

national special reconstruction financial assistance for areas severely affected by large earthquakes, typhoons, and so on. Articles 6, 7, and 11 cover the restoration of the likes of fishing boats and aquaculture facilities. In the case of the Great East Japan Earthquake, these articles were applied to Pacific Ocean coastal prefectures from Aomori to Chiba, as well as Niigata, Tochigi, and Nagano.

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restoration in the form of actively purchasing fishing boats and joint operations gradually advanced in these areas (Baba 2013). Subsequently, in the October 2011 third supplementary budget, another 11.3 billion yen was provided. Regarding aquaculture, a key industry in the affected areas, based on a designation under Article 7 of this law, in the first and third supplementary budgets, 26.7 and 10.7 billion yen were provided for facility restoration, respectively. These funds were primarily for the facilities of individuals. In addition to those shown in Table 1, the restoration of joint use aquaculture-related facilities owned by FCAs is covered by Article 6. In the first and third supplementary budgets, 7.6 and 1.4 billion yen were allocated for these facilities, respectively. Accordingly, due to many aquaculture facilities being owned by individuals, budgetary measures were often taken for individual fishery households rather than organizations such as FCAs.5 However, 81.8 billion yen was allocated for the restoration support funding for fishery and aquaculture households that appeared in the third supplementary budget (Stage II—[1] in Table 1). This money was divided between two options. “Option A”6 (23.8 billion yen) was for fishery restoration support. Based on the plans of FCAs and the like, the national government would pay various expenses in advance, including personnel expenses for operations. Fishery operators who wished to participate in this program were able to begin operations without having to make an initial investment. FCAs would return these expenses to the national government in the form of their catches. This program’s merit was that the national government would partially cover debts in the case that they arose, and that initial investment was unnecessary. This was a three-year program. From 2012 onwards, of the 53 implemented plans since 2012, three are still ongoing, but by March 2020, 50 had been completed. The program was primarily used by fishery management bodies that engaged in offshore and pelagic fishing. “Option B,”7 for which 56.6 billion yen was allocated in the third supplementary budget, consisted of a subsidy geared toward smaller fishery households for aquaculture restoration support. While its merits and mechanisms are the same as Option A, it is notable for having fishery operators form groups of their choosing, and for being premised on joint operations. In fishing villages, even before the earthquake, sometimes work that could not be completed by individual fishery households (for example, installing and moving aquaculture facilities) would be done jointly by several households. However, harvesting and marketing were generally conducted independently by each household. Fishery operators ruined by the earthquake often used these funds to restart their aquaculture operations. In Iwate, 58 groups/493 fishery households from Rikuzentakata to the central city of Miyako used the subsidies to quickly restart their aquaculture operations. In Miyagi, there were 63 groups/463 fishery households, primarily in Shiogama and more northern 5 Of course, almost all fishing boats are owned by individuals. However, in post-earthquake restora-

tion budgetary measures, fishing boats were assumed to be for joint use. This is clearly different from the restoration budget for aquaculture facilities (Baba 2013). 6 This subsidy is called the “Ganbaru Gyogyo Fukko Shien Jigyo” in Japanese. 7 This subsidy is called the “Ganbaru Yoshoku Fukko Shien Jigyo” in Japanese.

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parts of the prefecture. According to the 2013 fishery census, there were 903 and 1,172 fishery households primarily making a living by aquaculture in Iwate and Miyagi, respectively. From this, we can see that more fishery households resumed their activities using this subsidy in Iwate than in Miyagi. Expenses related to removing debris that flowed out into the ocean due to the tsunami were also covered: 12.3 billion yen in the first supplementary budget, and 16.8 billion yen in the third supplementary budget (Stage II—[4] in Table 1). Fishers would be paid approximately 12,000 yen per day to do this work. After the earthquake, fishers in affected areas used this to cover daily living expenses while cleaning their fishing grounds. It probably contributed to preventing an outflux of fishery operators immediately after the earthquake.

3 The Restoration Process of the Ishinomaki East FCA 3.1 Overview of Area and the Pre-earthquake Fishery Figure 1 shows the locations of the areas covered in this chapter. The Ishinomaki East FCA and the Hirota Bay FCA are on the Oshika Peninsula in Miyagi’s city of Ishinomaki and Iwate’s city of Rikuzentakata, respectively. Figure 1 also shows the number of fishery households in each area in 2008 and 2013, and the categories of these entities by the type of fishery work they primarily engage in. I will now discuss the locations of these covered areas, their socioeconomic characteristics, and the characteristics of their fishing industries before the earthquake. The Ishinomaki East FCA is located approximately 14 km from the center of Ishinomaki. The Oshika Peninsula, where Ishinomaki East FCA is located, has a mountainous topography characteristic of ria shorelines. In the area overseen by the Ishinomaki East FCA, there are five fishing villages: Makinohama, Takenohama, Kitsunezakihama, Sudachi, and Fukkiura (Fig. 1b). They are far from urban areas, and even today, most households in these fishing villages work in the fishery, excluding the small number of people who commute to Ishinomaki or elsewhere. In 2010, before the earthquake, there were 14 fishery households in Makinohama, seven in Takenohama, 21 in Kitsunezakihama, seven in Sudachi, and 23 in Fukkiura. Before the earthquake, over 75% of the Ishinomaki East FCA fishery households primarily engaged in oyster farming for a living. This was the area’s key industry (Fig. 1b). Central Miyagi, where Ishinomaki is located, is a major oyster producing area. Notably, most oysters from the prefecture are cooperatively marketed through the Miyagi Prefectural FCA.8 Further, most are shucked and shipped for raw 8 In collective sales system, fishery operators entrust the sales of marine products to the FCA. Fishery

operators pay a set fee, which serves as one source of income for the FCA. Further, fishery operators do not need to shoulder the cost of creating new sales channels. Various marine products are marketed cooperatively, depending on the FCA and the area. Collective sales system is a foundational business strategy for FCAs.

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consumption.9 For this reason, communal oyster shucking sites that clear hygiene standards for shipment are found in each FCA. Oysters shucked in the shucking sites are brought to one of the three bidding places in the prefecture and sold through middlemen making bids. This kind of collective sales system is not very old. In Miyagi Prefecture, collective sales system through FCAs was implemented to increase the incomes of oyster farming households in the mid-1960s. Ishinomaki East FCA oyster farming began in the early 1950s. Until the 1970s, individual fishery households would directly ship their produce to middlemen. However, after oyster farming got on track, FCAs’ investments increased so that fishery operators could, for example, buy materials. For this reason, and partially due to the direction of the prefectural government, the Ishinomaki East FCA began vigorously encouraging fishers to take part in collective sales system. In 1977, all sales were done cooperatively. In 1980, a communal oyster shucking site was installed in every fishing village. Thus, collective sales system for farmed oysters is a characteristic of the shipping of oysters for raw consumption in Miyagi. The Ishinomaki East FCA is no exception. When the price of oysters decreased in 1987, there were calls, primarily from younger individuals, to introduce silver salmon aquaculture, which was flourishing in northern Miyagi. However, due to the small fishing grounds for aquaculture, they eventually decided to use the fishing grounds exclusively for oyster farming, and chose to sell them cooperatively. Besides oyster farming, while individual fishers also engage in the likes of gill net and small set net fishing, sand lance (Ammodytes personatus) lift net fishing, conducted jointly in early spring by multiple fishers, is important (Fig. 2). In this way, in the Ishinomaki East FCA, while oyster farming is foundational, fishery households are run according to each household’s labor abilities while incorporating other fishing boat-based fishery operations. Fishing villages are the basic unit of social relations when conducting these kinds of coastal fishery activities. For example, communal oyster shucking sites were in each fishing village, and oyster farming grounds are divided by fishing village. Further, work was jointly conducted by each fishing village, including moving and installing oyster farming facilities and cleaning the beds of oyster farming grounds. Fishing villages conducted regular events such as community festivals, street cleanings, and so on.

3.2 The Restoration Process of the Coastal Fishery On March 11, 2011, the Ishinomaki East FCA was reaching the end of the oyster farming shipping season. This area has minimal low land, and fishing villages and fishing ports are close to each other. Partly for these reasons, many fishers were 9 In

contrast to Miyagi, oysters from the prefecture of Hiroshima, which produces the most oysters in aquaculture in Japan, are almost all meant to be eaten after heating. Further, there are no collective sales system. Aquaculture operators directly sell to distributors such as middlemen.

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119

a. Fishery

b. Aquaculture

small trawl net

lift net

small set net gillnet

shellfish and seaweed collection other fishery

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Wakame seaweed

sea cucumber (mainly by trawl net) 5

(hundred million yen)

12 10 Sales of aquaculture

Sales of fishery

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3

2

1

0

(hundred million yen)

8 6 4 2

1998 2003 2008 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

Year

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1998 2003 2008 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

Year

Fig. 2 Changes in sales by kinds of fishery in the Ishinomaki East FCA in 1998, 2003, 2008, 2011–2018 (Source FCA annual report)

able to ride out the tsunami in the ocean before it reached land, and protected their fishing boats. People were also able to quickly move up to higher land behind the fishing village and fishing port; therefore, there was no human injury, except for one fisherman who died. Thus, the number of FCA members did not change directly due to the earthquake. However, later in 2015, there was a drop of 29 full members (primarily elderly fishery operators), and an increase of 12 associate members.10 In this year, there were 95 members, fewer than the 112 members it had in 2010 (Fig. 3). Thus, its fishery operators are growing increasingly older. As of 2019, there were 18 fishery households engaged in oyster farming in Fukkiura, seven in Sudachi, nine in Kitsunezakihama, five in Takenohama, and seven in Makinohama. Most of the oyster farming facilities were washed away, and the fishing villages’ communal oyster shucking sites located at the fishing ports were destroyed by the tsunami. As previously described, in Miyagi, almost all farmed oysters are cooperatively marketed after having been shucked. The rebuilding of communal oyster shucking sites was an important restoration task. However, the area’s fishery restoration work had many issues. For example, to rebuild communal oyster shucking sites, there was a need to raise the ground of the lowered fishing port. Here, I will discuss the restoration process of the fishery/aquaculture that followed the earthquake. Partially due to there being minimal damage to fishing boats, fishery 10 The Fisheries Industry Cooperative Association Act dictates that members who operate for more than 90 to 120 days a year are full members, and the others are associate members. Both full and associate members invest in the FCA and are able to receive services related to the shipping of marine products and the like through it. However, associate members cannot participate in the FCA’s management, are unable to vote at general meetings, cannot become board members, and so on.

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Fig. 3 Changes in the number of members at Ishinomaki East FCA, 2010–2018 (Source FCA annual report)

Full members 120

Associate members

(members

Number of members

100

80

60

40

20

0

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Year

activities restarted in the 2011 FY, albeit on a small scale. Using small set nets and collecting shellfish and seaweed, fishers’ sales were in total between five and 50 million yen. In early spring (March to May) 2011, due to the influence of the earthquake and the nuclear accident, lift net fishing of sand lance (Ammodytes personatus), a kind of floating fish, was not conducted. Until around the fall of 2011, fishery operators worked to remove debris from fishing grounds. From 2012 onwards, sales had recovered (primarily thanks to lift net fishing and small set net fishing), and the 2015 FY saw them return to pre-earthquake levels. Further, in the 2014 FY, the small trawl net haul recovered. Regarding aquaculture, while facilities were destroyed by the tsunami, around July 2011, oyster seeds were collected using the few surviving aquaculture facilities. Oysters from this time proliferated, and in 2012 the sales were around 100 million yen. In 2012, there was no shucking site for the oysters, and therefore, over half of those shipped at this time were shelled (Fig. 4). In the winter of 2012, Fukkiura, which out of the five fishing villages has the most fishers, was the first to restore its shucking site. At first, people in all the five fishing villages were allowed to use this site. Subsequently, the number of aquaculture facilities increased, and in the 2014 FY, communal oyster shucking sites were also rebuilt in the other fishing villages. The number of shipped shucked oysters significantly increased, and sales recovered (Figs. 2 and 4). Currently, although the fishery production has not recovered to preearthquake levels partially due to a decrease in the number of fishers, it continued to grow to approximately 500 million yen in the 2018 FY. Interestingly, one way that people responded during the restoration process was by engaging in Wakame seaweed farming, a kind of aquaculture that was not practiced

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a. Wakame seaweed 2.5

b. Oyster

(hundred million yen)

8

Sales of fishery

Sales of fishery

2 1.5 1

6

4

2

0.5 0

(hundred million yen)

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Year salted

raw

0

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Year shucked

shelled

mekabu (wakame seaweed roots)

Fig. 4 Changes in sales of Wakame seaweed and oyster by product at the Ishinomaki East FCA, 2011-2018 (Source FCA annual report)

before the earthquake. Wakame seaweed farming was attempted in 2012, primarily in Fukkiura, and in Kitsunezakihama and Sudachi. In the 2011 FY, its sales totaled around 10 million yen. Subsequently, Wakame seaweed farming grew to around 80 million yen in the 2015 FY, and approximately 200 million yen in the 2018 FY. It has become an important aquaculture product for the area. As of 2019, 14 fishery households engage in Wakame seaweed farming alongside oyster farming in Fukkiura, two in Sudachi, four in Kitsunezakihama, two in Takenohama, and three in Makinohama. In the background to the introduction of Wakame seaweed farming in this area, it became easy to enter the market due to the decrease in the supply of Wakame after the earthquake. Another reason for this was that the production period of Wakame seaweed is short. Unlike oysters, which require two to three years to produce, it is possible to plant Wakame in autumn and harvest in spring. While boiled and salted Wakame goes for a higher price, it can also be shipped in simpler forms, such as raw or as Mekabu (Wakame seaweed roots). It was for this reason that in the 2012 FY, when the outlook for the oyster farming was unclear, it was primarily attempted in Fukkiura, where there are comparatively many young people. In the 2012 FY, the farmed Wakame seaweed was shipped in raw form. From the 2013 to the 2015 FYs, it was mostly shipped as Mekabu. Since the 2016 FY, while Mekabu has been part of the Wakame that is shipped, there has been an increase in its raw, boiled, and salted forms. It has changed from being a temporary replacement aquaculture product to a permanent one (Fig. 4). Wakame was added to coastal oyster farming grounds when Territorial Use Rights for Fisheries (TURF) for aquaculture were updated in 2013. There was also a change in the form in which farmed oysters were shipped. As previously described, oyster seed collection was successful in July 2011, and people

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first aimed to ship shelled oysters. Person A, a fishery operator leader in the Makinohama fishing village, organized a shipping group with other fishing village fishery operators and together they created new shelled oyster sales channels. A volunteer who had come from Hokkaido facilitated their introduction to oyster farmers from the Konbumori FCA in Hokkaido’s town of Kushiro, and the group shipped shelled oysters to them. While less common in recent years, immature oysters raised in production areas like Miyagi had been purchased and then fattened in Hokkaido’s farming grounds before being shipped out as Hokkaido farmed oysters. Person A resurrected this network that had originally existed between production areas, and worked to create a new organization to expand sales channels. In 2012, these oysters were jointly shipped by the fishing village. Currently, the shipping of shelled oysters to Konbumori FCA is ongoing, led by Person A. They are suitable for fishery households with elderly members as they require less labor power. Shelled oyster shipments are said to have begun to increase around the Miyagi Prefectural FCA merger in 2007. From the 2012 FY onwards, the Ishinomaki East FCA’s shipments of shelled oysters have averaged sales of approximately 60 million yen per annum. Thus, after the earthquake, changes emerged in the Ishinomaki East FCA’s aquaculture. We should consider whether these changes are temporary post-earthquake changes or permanent ones. Further, three Ishinomaki districts, including the Ishinomaki East FCA, acquired the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) aquaculture product certification for their oysters. Thus, efforts are being made to strengthen sales and marketing for the future.

4 The Restoration Process of the Hirota Bay FCA 4.1 Overview of the Area and the Pre-earthquake Fishery The Hirota Bay FCA is located in Rikuzentakata (southern Iwate, on the border with Miyagi) (Fig. 1a). There were 1,556 Rikuzentakata deaths due to the Great East Japan Earthquake. It had the greatest damage compared to anywhere else in Iwate. There was extensive tsunami damage in the city center, with buildings destroyed everywhere. Rikuzentakata’s current boundaries were created after the merging of the town of Takata and neighboring municipalities in 1955. The area overseen by the Hirota Bay FCA overlaps with the area of Rikuzentakata. The present-day FCA was created from the merger of five FCAs located in the municipalities that had previously existed (Kesen FCA, Takata FCA, Yonesaki FCA, Otomo FCA, and Hirota FCA). The headquarters of the Hirota Bay FCA is currently at the former Hirota Bay FCA. The other FCAs are now branches, and each branch deals with fishery activities separately. For example, the TURF for aquaculture used for aquaculture grounds are granted by each separately. Before the earthquake in 2008, the Hirota district had 326 fishery

Adaptive Capacity in Fishery Restoration … a. Fishery

b. Aquaculture Fish Sea urchin

3.5

123

Abalone Other seaweed

(hundred million yen)

20

Wakame seaweed Bering sea cockle Other seaweed

18

Sales of aquaculture

3

Sales of fishery

Oyster Scallop Other clams (hundred million yen)

2.5 2 1.5 1

16 14 12 10 8 6 4

0.5 0

2 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Year

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2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Year

Fig. 5 Changes in sales by the kinds of fish at Hirota Bay FCA, 2008–2017 (Source FCA annual report)

households, while the Otomo district had 78, the Yonesaki district 26, the Takata district three, and the Kesen district had 56 such households. The characteristics of the fishing industries in the districts facing the Hirota Bay (Kesen, Takata, Yonesaki, and Otomo) and Hirota, which is on the Hirota Peninsula and faces the open ocean, somewhat differ (Takano 2013). As of 2008, shellfish aquaculture (centered on oysters and scallops) was primarily conducted in the inner bay districts (Kesen, Yonesaki, Otomo, etc.). Wakame seaweed farming was primarily conducted in the Hirota district. The open sea-facing Hirota district and part of the Otomo district are blessed with fishing grounds that have good demersal resources. The collection of abalone, sea urchin and other shellfish, and seaweed is an important part of their fishery (Fig. 1c). As of 2008, the FCA’s overall sales was approximately 2.1 billion yen; aquaculture and fishing accounted for around 1.8 billion and 300 million yen, respectively. In aquaculture, oysters have the greatest sales, at approximately 800 million yen. They are followed by Wakame seaweed (approximately 700 million yen), then scallops and other products (Bering sea cockle [Clinocardium californiense], sea squirt, etc.) (Figure 5). As such, various species are farmed. The collective sales system in Iwate, though, is different from that in Miyagi. For example, in Iwate, much effort has been made in collective sales system of Wakame seaweed. Almost all products are sold through the FCA federation,11 and pricing is coordinated on a prefectural level. On the other hand, FCA federation collective sales system almost do not exist for oysters. Most fishers ship oysters directly to middlemen. For

11 An FCA federation is an FCA umbrella organization. In prefectures where there are multiple FCAs (like Iwate), there are FCA federations that play a coordinating role for them on a prefectural level.

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this reason, unlike Wakame seaweed, individual fishery operators have a high degree of freedom when it comes to oysters. Further, as is the case for other Iwate FCAs, there are fisheries run independently by the FCA separate from the individual fishery activities of fishery households. One example is large set net fishing. The FCA operates three set nets in its area, and catches salmon, mackerel, squid, yellowtail, and other products in early fall. Young fishers living in the district are hired year-round for labor, which serves as an opportunity for them to learn this ocean trade. In addition to set nets, the FCA also independently operates a Wakame seaweed farming business, to provide raw materials to its Wakame boiling and salting facility. It hires approximately 20 elderly fishers (living on pensions) in the district, and they land approximately 400 tons every year. As is the case in the Hirota Bay, Iwate, and the Sanriku Coast, the aquaculture business is primarily comprised of family businesses run by couples. If the husband (or wife) retires, sometimes the business can no longer be run. We could say that the FCA-operated businesses are the safety nets for such fishery operators.

4.2 The Restoration Process of the Coastal Fishery The tsunami caused extensive damage at each of the Hirota Bay FCA’s branches. Houses that were in lowland areas, and fishery-related facilities and equipment (such as aquaculture facilities, fishing boats, and fishing ports) were destroyed. At the time of the earthquake, in the five districts overseen by the Hirota Bay FCA, there were 737 full members, 779 associate members, and 42 staff members. 26 full members, 38 associate members, and one staff member died due to the tsunami. As for damage to the fishery-related facilities and equipment, there was damage worth approximately 2.1 billion yen to the FCA’s set nets and fishing boats. A total of 3,631 aquaculture facilities (Wakame seaweed, oysters, scallops, etc.) with a value of approximately 2.2 billion yen were damaged. A total of 1,401 fishing boats owned by members were wholly or partially damaged. This was 97% of those owned by members before the earthquake. The restoration of this production infrastructure was an important task for the relaunching of fishery activities. Figure 6 shows changes in the number of members of the Hirota Bay FCA. Since the earthquake in 2011, while some figures did decrease directly due to the tsunami damage, considering the burden that restoring aquaculture facilities and fishing boats presents to elderly fishery operators, it appears that, like the Ishinomaki East FCA, many members became associates. For this reason, the number of full members decreased by 33 from the 2011 FY to the 2012 FY; conversely, the number of associate members increased by 19, and in 2017, there were 541 full members and 761 associate members. Before the earthquake, elderly

Adaptive Capacity in Fishery Restoration … Fig. 6 Changes in the number of members at Hirota Bay FCA, 2008–2017 (Source FCA annual report)

125 Full members

1,600

Associate members

(members

Number of members

1,400 1,200 1,000 800 600 400 200 0

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Year

fishery operators tended to become associate members, which increased after the earthquake.12 Subsequently, let us discuss the restoration process of the coastal fishery. In the Hirota Bay FCA, due to the pronounced damage to fishing boats, securing new ones first was an urgent task for the restoration of its coastal fishery. The FCA, thus, began acquiring fishing boats using subsidies (Stage II—[2] in Table 1) around the summer of 2011.13 In the 2011 FY, only 10% were restored, while in 2012, approximately 70% were restored. Since the same subsidy considered the joint use of fishing boats as a premise, at first, multiple fishery households shared the same fishing boat. However, as the number of fishing boats increased, many of them came to be owned by individuals. As fishing boats were acquired, it became possible to engage in simple work such as shellfish and seaweed collection. However, in 2011, partially due to the full number of fishing boats not having been acquired, out of respect for equality, it was decided that no shellfish and seaweed collection would be conducted in any FCA districts (excluding experimental operations to survey abalone resources).14 Some 12 The tendency for societal problems that existed since before the earthquake (such as the aging of fishery operators) to be accelerated or made more serious by it can be found in other areas as well (Nagano 2014). The aging of fishery operators is a major problem in Japan’s fishery industry. 13 For example, in the case of other Iwate FCAs, such as the Omoe FCA, there are districts that took measures such as the use of existing internal reserves immediately after the earthquake to acquire fishing boats from around Japan and construct joint operations systems. However, these cases are very rare. 14 Yoshino (2017) clarifies how the use of benthic resources (abalone, etc.) immediately following the earthquake differed depending on the area.

126 Sales (hundred million yen)

Catches (ton) 3,500

7

3,000

6

2,500

5 2,000 4 1,500 3 1,000

2

500

1 0

Catches of large set net fishery

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Sales of large set net fishery

Fig. 7 Changes in sales and catches of large set net fishery managed by Hirota Bay FCA, 2008–2017 (Source FCA annual report)

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0

Year

districts began shellfish and seaweed collection in the 2012 FY. In such districts, since fisheries had not operated in the previous year, abalone production levels were restored (Fig. 5). While abalone had been steadily increasing until the 2015 FY, currently, Isoyake (seaweed deforestation), as discussed by Ikeguchi in Chapter 7 of this book, is progressing and since the 2016 FY, catches have been poor. As the set nets operated by the FCA were for the common good, at an early stage, a subsidy was used to secure materials for them and, by the end of 2012, they had been restored (Takano 2013). They create employment for younger fishers and have been important for the restoration of the local fishery (Fig. 7). In the Hirota Bay FCA, the damage by tsunami and issues related to the restoration of aquaculture differ by district. As described in 6.4.1, the aquaculture facilities were owned by individuals because of the different types of aquaculture practiced and shipments offered by each fisher. This is unlike the case of the Ishinomaki East FCA, where there are communal oyster shucking sites and sterilization facilities for each fishing village. In the case of Wakame seaweed, it proliferates, and producers were able to choose how to ship it (raw, as Mekabu, and so on). However, in the case of oyster and scallop farming, two to three years are required until harvesting, and quick restoration is difficult at the individual level. For this reason, people worked to relaunch their aquaculture businesses through collaborative operations while using the aquaculture subsidy mentioned in Sect. 2 (Option B in Stage II—[2] in Table 1). In the Hirota Bay FCA districts of Yonesaki, Otomo, and Kesen, which primarily engage in shellfish aquaculture (oysters, scallops, etc.), aquaculture groups that used the subsidy were formed. In Otomo, an oyster farming group (shucked oysters, five fishery households), another oyster farming one (shelled oysters, five fishery households), and a sea squirt farming one (six fishery households) were formed. In the Yonesaki district, an oyster farming group (shucked oysters, five fishery households), another oyster farming one (shelled oysters, five fishery households), a sea squirt farming one (seven fishery farming households), a scallop farming one, and a

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Bering sea cockle one (five fishery households) were formed. In the Kesen district, a Bering sea cockle group (five fishery households), an oyster one (shelled, four fishery households), and another oyster one (shelled, five fishery households) were formed. Further, in the Hirota district, because Wakame seaweed farming had been primarily practiced, many worked to restore such operations on an individual basis. Only six fishery households that had engaged in scallop farming formed a scallop farming group (because the scale of their aquaculture production had been the same [Takano 2013]). Thus, in the case of the Hirota Bay FCA, 58 fishery households that engaged in aquaculture in four of its districts formed eleven groups and worked to relaunch their aquaculture operations collaboratively. The Hirota Bay FCA, thus, became the FCA with the greatest number of collaborative aquaculture groups formed in Iwate. The creation of collaborative groups was an important step toward relaunching aquaculture operations. However, this kind of operational arrangement did not continue as such. In 2017, when the subsidy program came to an end, it was believed that all returned to work as individual fishery households. Therefore, considering the changes in the production value of the fishery/aquaculture from 2011 until 2017, first, in 2011, the restoration of Wakame seaweed farming was the quickest. This is because, as was the case for the abovedescribed Ishinomaki East FCA, Wakame can be produced in a short period, and there were some fishery households that temporarily incorporated Wakame immediately after the earthquake, even among fishery operators who before the earthquake had primarily engaged in oyster and scallop farming. From the year 2012, when aquaculture groups were created, the production value of oysters and scallops began to increase. In the beginning of 2014, oyster farming proliferated, and, as had been the case before the earthquake, surpassed the production value of Wakame. In 2017, its production value returned to pre-earthquake levels. Currently there are fewer fishery households in the Hirota Bay FCA than there were before the earthquake, and there are open spaces in farming grounds. However, the usage level of farming grounds per individual fishery household surpasses that of pre-earthquake times.

5 Discussion and Conclusion As we have seen, in fishing villages in tsunami-affected areas, many indispensable assets for coastal fishing and aquaculture (such as aquaculture facilities and fishing boats) were lost. Until these assets were restored, collective action that matched the situations in which people found themselves was conducted. Some of these actions included: introducing new aquaculture species, diversifying products, opening new sales channels and forming new organizations, and the creation of collaborative aquaculture operations. In this final section, I discuss the characteristics of the coastal fishery restoration processes of the two FCAs mentioned above, and these characteristics’ differences and similarities, considering three of the adaptive capacity features presented by Cinner et al. (2018): assets, flexibility, and social organization.

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First, we consider the issues surrounding the restoration of assets as faced by both FCAs. In the Ishinomaki East FCA, which since before the earthquake had specialized in oyster farming, people first aimed to rebuild communal oyster shucking sites. In the case of the Hirota Bay FCA—where there were various types of aquaculture operations depending on the district, and there were great differences between fishery operation management forms depending on fishery household—it was difficult to restore shellfish aquaculture (oysters, scallops, etc.) on a fishery household level. In the case of the Ishinomaki East FCA, with the shared asset of a communal oyster shucking site not restored, alternative responses were adopted, such as shipping shelled oysters and introducing new Wakame seaweed farming. However, at first, these were measures to be taken until the primary fishery business of oyster farming got back on track, and people did not use the likes of subsidies premised on collaborative operations. They were entirely conducted with fishery households’ capital. Immediately after the earthquake, subsidy explanations were believed to be provided and application calls conducted through the FCA; however, no fishery operators wished to engage in collaborative aquaculture operations. In the background to this was the Miyagi Prefectural FCA’s business strategy. Each FCA has a communal oyster shucking site, and collective sales system for farmed oysters meant to be eaten raw was understood to be the core of their aquaculture business strategy. In the case of the Hirota Bay FCA, Wakame seaweed is the primary aquaculture species and is sold through collective sales system. After boiling and salting facilities were lost, it was possible to respond by shipping raw Wakame or Mekabu, partially because this seaweed grows quickly. Around the beginning of 2013, the individual fishery households team restored their boiling and salting facilities. In the case of the shellfish aquaculture business (scallops, oysters, etc.), fishery operators engaging in the same kind of aquaculture formed collaborative operation groups and restarted business after applying for and receiving subsidies. Above, I have highlighted how in these two FCAs’ areas, assets (key for restoration) were owned in different ways. In the case of the Ishinomaki East FCA, the restoration of shared assets was important for the restoration of coastal fishery activities, while in the case of the Hirota Bay FCA, the restoration of privately held assets was important. For this reason, different collective actions were applied. The perspective of how assets are owned offers a useful point of discussion when considering the area of assets concerning adaptive capacity. In this sense, post-earthquake restoration budgetary measures being set up to accommodate different forms of asset ownership can be seen as having provided underlying support for the restoration choices of fishers with diverse backgrounds. However, considering that the collaborative aquaculture operation groups’ members returned to work as individual fishery households after the program ended, we could say that there are some aspects that require reflection regarding this approach that considered collaborative operations as a premise. Subsequently, let us consider the kind of social organization that served as the foundation for collective action in fishing villages affected by the tsunami. While the handling of restoration work and collective action differed in these two areas, the micro-social organization of the fishing village was an important foundation. In

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fishing villages affected by the tsunami, since before the earthquake, people in the fisheries had already developed social relations through their daily fishery activities and daily lives. For example, users of aquaculture farming grounds are divided by fishing village, and in the Ishinomaki East FCA, coordination work for farming ground use and joint labor are done fishing village-wise. Further, in the restoration process, in Makinohama, a new organization was formed to ship shelled oysters to Hokkaido, and we can see that the core of this were the fishing villages’ human relationships. Moreover, in the case of the Hirota Bay FCA’s collaborative aquaculture operations, the foundation on which groups were organized consisted of the relationships between fishery households that had been formed through joint work (such as the moving of aquaculture facilities) since before the earthquake in each district. The folklorist Kawashima (2015)—based on their fieldwork regarding Sanriku Coast fishing villages that they had been engaging in since before the earthquake—argues that fishery-mediated social relationships between fishing village members and the leadership of fishing village leaders influenced each fishing village’s post-earthquake response and recovery planning. Today, spatial area under FCAs is becoming larger due to the consolidations (see Chapter 3 in this book), and the role of FCAs in restoration is considered critical in fisheries policies. However, we could say that even in the case of FCAs formed out of wide-area consolidations, fishing villages (pre-existing traditional social spaces) continued to play important roles, this time in the context of the restoration process. Akiyoshi (2016) makes a similar point while using the Hakosaki Peninsula (Kamaishi City, Iwate Prefecture) as an example. Further, from the case of the Hirota Bay FCA, we can see that the FCA played an important role in the coordination and spread of information during post-earthquake restoration work. I have clarified two FCAs’ restoration processes and discussed these processes using the concept of adaptive capacity. A significant part of the collective actions and adaptive capacities that appeared in restoration processes emerged from the characteristics of the fishery industries that had been formed in each area before the earthquake. In the future, I plan to engage in more case studies and discuss learning and agency, topics which I was not able to touch upon in this chapter.

References Akiyoshi M (2016) The role of fisheries cooperative societies in reconstruction process of earthquake affected small villages on the sea: a case study of peninsula areas in Kamaishi city, Iwate. J Rural Plan 35(1):27–32 (in Japanese) Baba O (2013) Present situation and problems of collaborative fishing operation in the areas damaged by the Great East Japan Earthquake. Japanese J Fish Econ 57(1):15–30 (in Japanese) Cinner JE, Adger WN, Allison EH et al (2018) Building adaptive capacity to climate change in tropical coastal communities. Nat Clim Chang 8:117–123 Delaney AE (2015) Japanese fishing cooperative associations: Governance in an era of consolidation. In: Jentoft S, Chuenpagdee R (eds) Interactive governance for small-scale fisheries. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 263–280

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Fisheries Agency (2019) Current status and challenges for the reconstruction of the fishery industry after the Great East Japan Earthquake. http://www.jfa.maff.go.jp/j/yosan/23/attach/pdf/kongo_ no_taisaku-10.pdf. Accessed 9 Sept 2019 (in Japanese) Kawashima S (2015) The various aspects of fishing villages recovering from disasters: Great East Japan Earthquake and Sanriku fishing villages. Annu Bull Rural Stud 51:119–147 (in Japanese with English Abstract) Nagano Y (2014) Depopulation, aging trends after the Great East Japan Earthquake in fishing communities: the case of Urato Islands in Miyagi, Japan. Bulletin of Senshu University School of Human Sciences. Sociolog 4(2):119–135 (in Japanese) National Police Agency (2019) Police measures and damage situation. https://www.npa.go.jp/news/ other/earthquake2011/pdf/higaijokyo.pdf. Accessed 9 Sept 2019 (in Japanese) Saio N, Ohgaki K (2014) Transregional and relative study focusing on the fishery villages in the tsunami-stricken of the Great East Japan Earthquake: situation of fishery area before and after the earthquake and recovery activities. J Rural Plan 33(4):413–417 (in Japanese) Takano T (2013) Regional situation and difficulties for the coastal fishery’s recovery from the tsunami disaster: a case of Hirota bay, Sanriku coast. Study Educ RegNal Des 4:1–21 (in Japanese) Vlachopoulou E, Mizuta DD (2018) Shellfish aquaculture and resilience: leadership experience from Kesennuma Bay, Japan. Mar Policy 92:111–119 Yoshino K (2017) TURFs in the post-quake recovery: Case studies in Sanriku fishing communities, Japan. Mar Policy 86:47–55

Adaptive Governance of Coastal Fisheries Resources in Response to Isoyake (Seaweed Deforestation) Akiko Ikeguchi

Abstract This chapter discusses the regional conditions of adaptive resource governance in response to Isoyake, which refers to ecological changes caused by seaweed deforestation that is triggered by changing oceanographic conditions. Previous studies have suggested the critical role of fisher’s knowledge, small-scale user groups, and shared norms in sustainable common-pool resource (CPR) institutions. However, adaptation to ecological changes and declining populations requires alternative networks of knowledge and multi-scale social organizations. Through a comparative study, I describe how two islands in the Goto Archipelago in the west of Kyushu, Japan with similar physical and demographic settings experienced significantly different processes of adaptation. The results show that network-type governance emerged for alternative resource use on one island, while fisheries declined on the other. In the former, the market fostering local ecological knowledge, the incorporation of customary institutions, island-scale resource governance by the Fisheries Cooperative Association (FCA), and fisher groups were examined as regional social resources. The spatial dynamics of social organizations should be given careful attention in order to find sustainable institutions that will adapt to coastal ecological change. Keywords Isoyake · Seaweed deforestation · Adaptive governance · Social resources · Spatial scale

A. Ikeguchi (B) College of Education, Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Ikeguchi et al. (eds.), Adaptive Fisheries Governance in Changing Coastal Regions in Japan, International Perspectives in Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4240-8_7

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1 Introduction 1.1 Isoyake: Ecological Change in the Temperate Rocky Shore Coastal communities in Japan have long benefited from underwater seaweed forests and associated organisms. Seaweed is not only an essential food item and medicine, it is also used as a fertilizer in farming and industrial material. The use of seaweed by farming and fishing villages led to the formation of self-organized, common use institutions on rocky, tidal shores. Fishers have recognized the decline of seaweed beds since the 1800s along the coasts of Japan. The significant decline of abalone, lobster, and other benthic resources accompanied by seaweed deforestation was called Isoyake by local fishers on the Pacific Coast. A Japanese scientist started to employ the term in the literature in 1903 (Taniguchi 1999). In Japanese, Iso (磯) means “rocky shore,” and yake (焼け) means “burning.” According to the chronology by Fujita (2010), large-scale Isoyake was scientifically reported initially on the western coast of Hokkaido and some parts of the Pacific Coast of central Japan by the early twentieth century. By the late twentieth century, it was reported on most of the Pacific Coast, and in the early twenty-first century, it was reported in most prefectures in Japan. The major declining seaweeds are Kombu (Saccharina spp.) on the northern coasts; Kajime (Ecklonia cava), Arame (Eisenia bicyclis), Hondawara (Sargassum spp.), Tengusa (Gelidium spp.), and Hijiki (Hizikia fusiformis) in the central to western coasts. These seaweeds are important food sources for commercial shellfish such as abalone, turbo shells, and sea urchins; fish, squid, and cuttlefish lay eggs in them. Seaweed deforestation has thus caused a significant decline in these resources. The causes of Isoyake are considered to include increased herbivory by fish and sea urchins along with lower seaweed production due to oceanographic conditions such as higher water temperatures and lower nutrition (Graham 2010; Fujita 2010). A century has passed since the phenomenon was first reported in academia in 1885; more than 1,000 papers were published in Japan regarding this issue until 2009. In 2007, the Fisheries Agency complied guidelines for the prevention of Isoyake based on the findings of an Isoyake countermeasure project conducted from 2004 to 2006. These guidelines applied a framework of adaptive management and described measures in eight stages: (1) detection of Isoyake, (2) specification of the factors, (3) setting of goals, (4) examination of countermeasures and technology, (5) choice of appropriate technology, (6) practice of the technology, (7) monitoring, and (8) feedback. Countermeasures included the capture and utilization of herbivorous fish, the removal of sea urchins, and the enhancement of kelp beds through the establishment of artificial reefs or the addition of fertilizer. Still, in most cases, the decline of certain fish resources was irreversible. Fishers responded to these changes by crafting new regulations on declining resources or fishing grounds, while at the same time shifting to alternative resources or livelihoods. These shifts and new institutions involve different participants on different spatial scales. In this paper, I focus on

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fishers’ adaptation to the latter’s aspects based on a comparative case study in the Goto Archipelago in the west of Kyushu, Japan.

1.2 Adaptive Governance and Regional Social Resources Under uncertain environmental conditions, resource users recognize changes and attempt to cope with them by using the physical and social resources they have. Compared to government-led, top-down management, local fishers and their organizations are often considered to have an advantage in adaptation to changes, as they are able to craft new institutions using their shared knowledge, social networks, and trust that enables cooperation. On the other hand, excessive dependence on a certain type of knowledge or local social network will likely sacrifice adaptive capacity for unexpected changes or marginalize the minority. The adaptive governance study calls for the description and evaluation of the structure of such institutions and examines the social resources for resilience (Dietz et al. 2003; Folke et al. 2005). It is often expected that small social units face lower costs for cooperation; however, adaptation to environmental change generally requires actions at a larger scale. Social organizations, social-ecological systems, and environmental change need to be examined in consideration of scale when they are accounted as social resources (i.e., Armitage et al. 2012). Here, I discuss a regional social resource with attention to three aspects. The first aspect is the scale of the social-ecological system (Berkes and Folke 1998). The relationships among the social unit, the resource ecology, and fishing ground use are affected by technological and socio-political change. In the context of Japanese fisheries studies, it is important to examine the spatial scale in relation to historical changes of political economies—in other words, the market as it is shaped by different political actors. In Japanese rocky shores, seaweeds and coastal benthic resources were not only used for subsistence but have been harvested for taxes paid to lords at least since the medieval period (Okita 1989). The export of dried fisheries products to China was promoted under the mercantilist policy of the han (藩 local government), which was under Tokugawa rule (1603–1868). The ruler granted commercial divers the exclusive rights to the sea area under their control. In Japanese fishing communities after WORLD WAR II until the 1970s, the dynamic changes in the domestic market caused by urban development increased regional differences in access and opportunities for sales of different resources. Recently, the development of the tourism industry has also provided new opportunities for resource use that causes change in social-ecological systems. Second, we should pay careful attention to the scale of different social organizations in fishing communities. In fisheries governance studies in Japan, the Fisheries Cooperative Association (FCA) has often been considered as identical to the basic social unit, or the “community,” in the fishing regions. However, especially for resources in tidal areas, different scales of settlements have become decision-making units, and the power distribution among these units has changed throughout history.

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When seaweed was an important source of fertilizer for farms until the early twentieth century, farming villages were powerful actors in resource governance under the protection of local rule. Fishing groups were organized in different scales from that of their villages or the FCA according to their needs for cooperation and conflict resolution for their operations. Even after the FCA was given the legal power to exercise Territorial Use Rights for Fisheries (TURF), its operational success was often affected by cooperation among these actors. As was shown by Sakita and Matsui in chapter “Rethinking the State of Fisheries Cooperative Associations Through the Long-Term Consolidation Movement in Japan” in this book, the FCA is undergoing consolidation, and the role of different actors in the community has become more significant in understanding local resource governance. The identity of organizations, trust, and cooperation among them should be considered in the above-mentioned framework of social-ecological systems. Finally, the learning process can be described as a regional social resource when we examine the process of cross-scale organization. The sustainability of fisheries should be considered as a consequence of learning and adapting to a changing environment, not as a remaining, intact tradition from the global market. In the context of declining population in Japanese coastal regions after WORLD WAR II to the present, agency emerged from cross-scale organization. This should be given attention, as it often serves as social memory, which is an important social resource for adaptive governance (Folke et al. 2005). The arena of learning is not restricted to fishing spaces. In Japan, cooperative ritual village events, political actions against development, and recent administrative restructuring under decentralization policy conventionally all present arenas for learning in the communities. Since it is difficult to examine all of the possible arenas, I would like to focus on the fisher groups, villages, and towns and describe some of the learning processes we identified. In this chapter, I examine fisheries resource governance and its regional social resource prior to and after Isoyake through a comparative study of the islands of Ojika and Uku in the Goto Archipelago (Fig. 1). In the following section, I provide an overview of the fisheries, the fishing organizations, the community, and the recent administrative restructuring of the two islands. Section 3 presents the resource governance of abalone, which declined due to Isoyake, and the emergence of the governance of finfish in Ojika. Section 4 shows the resource governance in Uku with attention to fisher-community relationships. In the last section, I summarize the governance structures of the two islands and examine as regional conditions the environment fostering local ecological knowledge, the incorporation of customary institutions, island-scale resource governance by the FCA, and fisher groups. I argue that the spatial dynamics of social organizations should be given careful attention in order to identify sustainable institutions to adapt to coastal ecological change. In July and October of 2017, fieldwork was conducted in Ojika and in March 2019 in Uku. We interviewed fishers, FCA officials, and local fisheries division officers in the town office. FCA annual reports were referenced to describe FCA organizations and activities. For the histories of the communities, I referred to Ojika Town History (Ojika Town History Editing Committee 1978) and Uku Town History (Uku Town History Editing Committee 2003), unless otherwise noted.

Adaptive Governance of Coastal Fisheries Resources … 0

N

5km

135

Uku Ojika

Sasebo City Tokyo Osaka

t Go

o

o lag ip e ch r A

Saga Pref.

Nagasaki Pref.

Nagasaki City

Kyushu shown in the right figure

Amakusa City

N

0

10

20km

Fig. 1 Study area

2 Setting 2.1 Fisheries and Fishing Grounds Ojika and Uku are located in the northernmost part of the Goto Archipelago in the west of Kyushu (Fig. 1). Until Uku was merged with the city of Sasebo in 2006, both areas were in town administrations. Ojika consists of the main island and 17 remote islands, and Uku consists of the main island and one remote island. The islands are volcanic, and rocky shores develop along their coasts. The archipelago is located at the junction of two major ocean currents: the Tsushima Current and the Kuroshio. These oceanographic and geological conditions support a high diversity of fish species in the fishing grounds. Subsistence fishing in the Goto Archipelago has a long history, and archaeological remains there date back 10,000 years. Records from the tenth century suggest that abalone was collected as tribute to the Imperial Court. In the fourteenth century, the ruler of Ojika employed professional divers. The export of dried abalone to China started in the early seventeenth century from the port of Nagasaki. Ojika and Uku became major production areas in the trading network. Commercial whaling also began in the seventeenth century. After 1912, when fishing vessels were motorized, trawling and longline motherships started to operate on the adjacent seas of China and Korea. These industrialized fisheries provided stable employment with the islands. In

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the 1950s, the populations of Ojika and Uku, respectively, were over 10,000 (Fig. 2). After the South Korean government claimed new marine boundaries to protect its sovereignty in 1952, the Japanese large-scale fisheries declined. In 1970, agriculture and fisheries were major production sectors for the two islands (Fig. 3). According to the 2005 census, the fisheries sector employed 278 people (17.9% of all employment) in Ojika and 103 people (8.3% of all employment) in Uku. In Ojika, fisheries still provide major employment, but in Uku, it is a smaller percentage. Figure 4 shows the number of fishing households by sales in 2013. Those with sales lower than three million yen were likely to depend on a pension for their income. This shows that there were still commercially viable fisheries in Ojika, while there were less of them in Uku. Industrialization and urbanization in mainland Japan instigated labor outflow from the islands starting in the 1970s. People became more dependent on Sasebo for consumption and employment. This is the nearest commercial city at three and a half hours by sea transportation. As of 2015, the populations of Ojika and Uku were 2,560 and 2,187, respectively. The major fishing methods in the two islands were trolling, long-line, hook and line, gillnet, and diving. The latter three methods were practiced mostly within the areas TURF entitled with the FCA. Initially, in the late 1940s, there were eight FCAs in Ojika and four FCAs in Uku. In Ojika, all FCAs were consolidated in 1959 into the Ojika FCA. Four FCAs in Uku were consolidated into two in 1959, then those two were consolidated into the Uku FCA in 2002. In 2005, the Uku FCA and Ojika FCA consolidated into the Ojika-Uku FCA with its headquarters in Ojika. The total number of FCA members on each island is shown in Table 1. The Fisheries Industry Cooperation Association Act dictates that a full member of an FCA must operate their fisheries at least 90 days per year, otherwise they are granted a title of associate member. In practice, the qualification of membership is discussed by an FCA membership committee and members are selected from each fishing district. In

14,000

(person)

12,000

Population

Ojika

Uku

10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 0 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015

Year

Fig. 2 Population change in Ojika and Uku, 1955–2015 (Source Nagasaki Prefecture Annual Statistics)

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a. Ojika

(worker)

Year

1970

2005

0

500

1,000

1,500 2,000 2,500 Number of worker

3,000

b. Uku

3,500

(worker)

Year

1970

2005

0

500

1,000

Agriculture

1,500 2,000 2,500 Number of worker

Fishery

3,000

Manufacture

3,500

Service

Fig. 3 The change of labor composition by sector in 1970 and 2005 (Source Nagasaki Prefecture Annual Statistics) (million yen)

Higher than 10

Uku

Ojika

Income

8-10 5-8 3-5 1-3 Lower than 1 0

10

20

30

40

50

Number of household Fig. 4 Fishing households by income class in 2013 (Source Fisheries Census)

60

70

(household)

138 Table 1 The number of full members and associate members in FCA in Ojika and Uku in 2017

A. Ikeguchi Full member

Associate member

Total

Ojika

128

290

418

Uku

48

139

187

Source FCA annual report

the two islands, those categorized as associate members were generally subsistence fishers who mainly collected resources in Iso for a short period of time. As shown in Table 1, about 70% of members in each FCA were subsistence fishers. Both the Uku and Ojika FCA filled basic functions like the collective purchase of materials, financing, and TURF management. They both performed the collective sales of fish, although Ojika FCA was known to have a strict rule that all the fish was to be sold collectively. When the harvest was in bulk volume, or the fish price was extremely high, the fisher transported the harvest to the market himself and only paid a commission fee to the FCA. Nonetheless, most of the fish species were collected, weighed, recorded, sorted, and packed by the FCA staff. The fish were then transported by an FCA-owned boat to Sasebo and sold in its city market or transferred to larger markets in Tokyo or Osaka. Besides the outer island market, the Ojika FCA was a sole fresh fish retailer to the island’s consumers. The households and guest houses came to purchase fish from the day’s landing. In Ojika, more than 180 species of fish were consumed locally. In Uku, there were some privately owned fish retailers, and the fish that were landed were generally distributed by personal networks on the island. Under each island’s FCA, there were several fisher groups organized by type of fishing operation. The group usually shared their resources, fishing grounds, and marketing channels for their target species. Therefore, the group is generally the principal unit for formally or informally making rules of certain resource use. As fishers generally operates with several fishing tools by season, they may belong to several groups. In Ojika, the Out-Board Engine (OBE) group was comprised of all the full members of the FCA (Table 2). The OBE group concerns various fish resources, fishing ground use, and fish quality control. In Uku, there was no group that contained all FCA members. Both islands had a divers’ group, and they discussed the management of abalone and other benthic resources collected in Iso. Table 2 The number of members in fisher’s groups in Ojika and Uku in 2016

Group

Ojika

Uku

OBE Group

145

–

Diver

58

13

Gill net

43

–

Hairtail

33

7

Longline

–

6

Grunt

–

9

Source FCA annual report and interview

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Until recently, FCAs were a principal recipient of fishery-related financial aid from national and local governments. However, since the Fisheries Basic Act was enacted in 2001, the comprehensive development of fishing communities became a part of the national agenda. In 2005, the Remote Island Fishery Aid (RIFA) was established, and the fishing communities that established contracts with municipalities qualified as recipients of the financial aid. In Ojika, 141 fishing households joined the contract and conducted various projects, including the release of finfish fingerlings, the eradication of sea urchins, the installation of spawning beds for squid, the surveillance of poaching, the exploration of new fishing grounds, and the maintenance of abalone sanctuaries. They also published a fish book in 2010 with local fish names, ecology, regulations, photographs of fish, and a cooking recipe aimed to promote local consumption. In Uku, 144 fishing households signed the contract. They conducted the release of finfish fingerlings, the eradication of sea urchins, the installation of spawning beds for squid, the surveillance of poaching, and beach cleaning. Further, the Uku group attempted some product development from the fisheries such as high-value dried fish. They also practiced fish quality control, which included the maintenance of a live fish tank for marketing and visiting wholesale markets, a task that is usually performed by the FCA. Notably, in Uku, the group was an emerging actor in local fisheries development, although the activities were still dependent on short-term funding.

2.2 Village, Rituals, and Iso as the Commons The smallest institutionary unit in the resource governance of Iso was the village (locally called Buraku). One village can be comprised of 10–100 households. A village in Japan generally functioned as a primary living space for a household. From a viewpoint of a ruler in the Tokugawa period, the village functioned as a basic unit of rural control and taxation. This administrative function remained at a certain degree in the post-WORLD WAR II administration system. Above the village, there was the district (Go), which was composed of several villages. The district in Japan generally functioned as the management unit for common land and water (Suitsu 1970). In the Goto Archipelago, the district often had a common grassland for fodder. The district was replaced by the township in the Local Government Act of the Meiji government in 1888; however, it remains the customary unit—particularly in the Goto Archipelago. In Uku and Ojika, the districts with fishers were registered as the smallest social unit of the fishing community (gyogyo shuraku) in the Fisheries Census by the Fisheries Agency of the National Government (Figs. 5 and 6). Fishers from a district often shared a fishing port and provided mutual aid for the fishing operations. The customary use rights of Iso were managed by the village, whether or not the villagers were more engaged in farming or fishing. Figure 6 shows the customary tenure of the village for the use of Iso in Uku. Even villages that were not located in a fishing district had tenures at the shore of adjunct districts. While some were

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0

2

4 km

Nozakijima

Border of fishing district Fishing district Fuefukizai Kuroshima Ooura, Hamazumaeme Madarajima Ohshima Hamazuushirome Yanaginishi

Yanagihigashi Maegataushirome Karamisaki Noushima Souzu, Koba, Nakamura Mushima

Fig. 5 Fishing districts in Ojika (Source Fishing district boundary data by Fisheries Census 2013)

exclusively used by individual villages, others were commonly used by two or three villages. In the case of one village in Uku in 1975, before Isoyake broke out, there were different rules for each type of seaweed, namely Hijiki (Hizikia fusiformis), Wakame (Undaria pinnatifida), Tosakanori (Meristotheca papulosa), Tengusa (Gelidium spp.), and Hondawara (Sargassum spp.). Depending on the ecological conditions at the beginning of the season, the village committee established a harvest period three or four times during the season. In the case of Hijiki, which was most abundant among the algae, the first harvest in the season was communally practiced, and all sales were put into the revenue for the village’s savings. From the second harvest onward, households were allowed to harvest for their own consumption or sales. According to a former head of a village, before Isoyake, Hijiki was the only source of revenue for the village, while after Isoyake, each household was asked to pay in cash. Other algae such as Hondawara was important for manure to be used in farming, which was common along coastal Japan before manure was manufactured. A household was given a plot on the beach by the village and collected

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L

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M

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I

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Fishing district Tairahigashi Tairanishi Obama Kohnoura

Motoiira Okubo Nogata

A

Q: Village : Customary tenure of village

Fig. 6 Fishing districts and coastal customary tenure of the village in Uku (Source Fishing district boundary data by Fisheries Census 2013 and Katsuki 2009)

algae for their farm or to sell to other farming villages. Shellfish and sea urchins were also collected by households under the rules of the village. These collectors were registered as associate members of the FCA in order to comply with the Fishery Law that entitles TURF with the FCA, not with the village. Other important activities of the village were the organization of ritual events, which were often organized by several adjacent villages. Hence, the planning of such events had effects on spatial belongings and the scale of agency in community decision making. While people chose which Buddhist temple they belonged to depending on their sect, their relationship to a shrine was more spatially prescribed to the village. On both islands, people from different villages were often joint parishioners of one shrine. In Uku, there were three larger shrines that had respective parishioners on a district-scale. The fishers in the same district worked together to carry out ritual events in these shrines. However, there was no ritual event that

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involved the entire island. In Ojika, besides the village-scale and district-scale shrineparishioner relationships, there was one shrine in Nozakijima (Fig. 5) in which all islanders were parishioners. Every August, these islanders worshiped at the shrine on the date assigned for the village. Besides district-level ritual events conducted by fishers, the FCA, fishers, and fish buyers organized a festival in January wishing a good harvest for the year. The festival started in 1910 when the local fish market began operating. Fishers from the OBE group also organized annual ritual events to wish safety on the seas.

2.3 Administrative Restructuring In 1999, the national government promulgated the Comprehensive Local Autonomy Law as a part of decentralization policy, and the former Special Merger Law was revised in accordance with this reform. Under this law, municipal mergers were promoted by national and prefectural governments to strengthen the financial basis of local governments. For Ojika and Uku, the consolidation of municipalities to Sasebo was officially proposed and a merger council was organized in 2002. In Ojika, the mayor was elected in April 2003 and expressed opposition to the merger then left the council in October. Subsequently, workshops and town meetings were actively organized, and the communities learned about their economic status and the merits and demerits of the merger. Town hall officers voluntarily held study sessions and compiled a report on the merger. In 2004, a referendum was held in Ojika, and the merger was rejected. In April 2008, the Mayor of Ojika officially rejected the merger in a meeting with the Mayor of Sasebo. The learning process in the communities aroused agency and promoted voluntary activities in Ojika. One of the organizations established in this period for local economic development was non-profit organization (NPO) for tourism (Tashiro 2011). This NPO aimed to promote green and blue tourism by coordinating lodging between urban tour agents and farmer or fisher households. Supported by nationwide deregulations for accommodation facilities, they successfully established ecotourism programs and supplied local households with income opportunities. They received several national awards for their success and attracted more attention from travel agencies and the media. In the beginning, half of their operating budget was funded by the town office, but by 2008 they were able cover the costs with their own income. Increased popularity through tourism had a positive effect on the sustaining population. Since 2008, the number of immigrants to Ojika increased (Suda 2018), most of whom were from the urban areas of Kyushu. However, there were also immigrants from metropolitan areas of Tokyo and Osaka who are involved in various local development projects. As Maeda described in chapter “Changing Community Governance in the Coastal Fishing Regions”, Uku lost its administrative authority as a town after its merger with Sasebo in 2006. The proximate relationship between the town government and the community was replaced by a remote one between the city and the community.

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The district self-governing council (chiku-jichi-kyogikai) system established in 2016 was expected to secure island-scale decision-making opportunities for some local issues. According to the council members, the local issues discussed so far were road maintenance, the management of natural monuments and forests, the improvement of ship routes, and solar power development plans. However, the council members were the village leaders who were assigned not by election but by a rotation system, and some council members questioned the legitimacy of the council as a representative organization of the island.

3 From Abalone to Grunt: Switching Type Adaptive Governance in Ojika 3.1 Evolution of Abalone Resource Governance Abalone resources in Ojika started to decline in the 1980s, and fishers recalled that Isoyake has been significant since the late 1980s (Fig. 7). Historically, abalone production was managed by the Hirado han until the nineteenth century (Table 3). The export of dried abalone was an important source of revenue for the han. After the feudal system ended, the traders started to control its production and marketing; the divers had limited bargaining power. In 1884, inspired by a local doctor, divers in Ojika decided to organize themselves and started to process the products and more (tons)

(kg per person/day)

90

Abalone catch

80

CPUE

35 30

70

25

60

20

50 15

40 30

10

20

5

10 0

CPUE

Abalone catch

100

0 1978

80

82

84

86

88

90

92

94

96

98

Year Fig. 7 Changes in abalone catch and CPUE in Ojika, 1978–1999 (Source FCA documents. CPUE [Catch Per Unit Effort] represents the average amount of abalone caught by a single fisher per day)

144 Table 3 Abalone resource events and rules in Ojika

A. Ikeguchi Year

Events and governance

Tokugawa period

Production under management of Hirado han government

1899–1965

Harvest season was limited to 4/8-7/13

1988

Fishers group started collective sales of abalone

1959

FCA established. OBE group organized OBE proposed collective sales of fish

1964

Introduction of wetsuit

1965

Harvest season was limited to one month

1976

Quota system was first introduced

1980

FCA built surveillance boat

1987

Typhoon no.12 attack

2005

Town, FCA, volunteer collaboration on eradication of sea urchin

Source Interview, FCA annual report, Ojika Town History

actively participate in the setting of market prices. The Ojika FCA was established in 1959, and the OBE group was organized under the FCA. The OBE group was organized on an island-scale from the start, and they began the collective sales of fresh fish, which had also been under the control of traders. Executive members of the FCA considered that the initiative of collective abalone processing and sales promoted fishers’ self-organization and agency in the resource management of the island. As the introduction of wetsuits in 1964 intensified catching efforts, the divers reduced the harvest season from three months to one month. A year later, the abalone resource management committee was established. The committee was organized by the FCA board members and staff; fishing groups, which included diver groups; OBE groups; gillnet groups; the municipal office; and the Nagasaki Prefectural Institute of Fisheries (NPIF). The committee introduced a quota system on abalone resources in 1976, which was one of the earliest trials in Japan. In this system, the NPIF proposed the year’s quota based on the catch per unit effort (CPUE) and the number of divers in the previous year. The fishers, the municipal seed production center, and the FCA surveillance section shared information about ecological conditions, abalone seeding status, market prices, and the status of poaching. Despite these efforts, a disastrous typhoon in 1987 caused damage to fishing vessels, and consequentially, the fishers intensified their catching efforts regarding abalone in order to finance the repair or purchase of ships. The municipal office, the FCA, and volunteer divers jointly launched a project to collect algae-grazing sea urchins in 2005. Despite those efforts, abalone resources have still been declining since the late 1980s.

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3.2 Switching to Alternative Resources and Crafting New Governance Since the fishers learned that the abalone resources were not recovering, they sought income sources from other pursuits. Grunt (Parapristipoma trilineatum) was one of the targeted resources for which catching efforts significantly increased after Isoyake occurred. In Ojika, yellowtail and tuna fishing in winter had been the major source of income before Isoyake, and squid had been another major target in the late winter to spring. After the abalone season, they caught grunt and groupers from summer to autumn. In the late 1970s, night fishing via underwater lights was introduced to Ojika and it became popular in the 1980s. The technique of night fishing for grunt should be understood as the impetus for crafting the new institutions. Grunt fishing was performed mainly in water 10– 30 m deep; therefore, the majority of fishing spots were within the TURF, which was permitted by the Ojika FCA. Small-scale gillnetters had good knowledge about these spots even before night fishing became popular. The daily operation starts right before sunset. Upon arrival at the spot, the fisher sets anchor and drops the light underwater. Within about an hour, small baitfish such as silver-striped round herring (Spratelloides gracilis) are attracted to the light, and grunts then follow them. The fishers drop a line with five to 10 hooks with lures and pull it up every five to ten minutes until sunrise. As they repeat this daily operation, the fish learn to go to the spot and the larger grunt then begin to settle there. An experienced fisher says that after three years of practice, they can catch the grunt of the largest size class. In order to keep the spot in this state, a fisher spends not just time and effort, but also money on fuel for the battery to keep the light going. As the fishers developed a sense of ownership for the spots in which they make these efforts, the market price of grunt increased and more conflicts emerged. Hayama (2005) identified three stages in the development of rules for grunt night fishing in Ojika. In the initial stage from the introduction of the technique in the 1970s, fishers anchored their boats in one spot day and night to exclude other fishers. Since spots were used on a first-come, first-served basis, those who came late had to wait on the sea for other fishers to leave valuable fishing spots. When a spot was occupied by another fisher, they had to wait for one or two nights on the water. In the second stage from the mid-1970s up to 1985, regular users of each spot were recognized, but competition over spots well-known by fish was still intense. Fishers started to search for new spots. Through tacit agreements it was recognized that fishers who discovered a spot first had the priority for its exclusive use. In the third stage from 1985 until now, spots were used more exclusively by the original fisher, but the practice of waiting in a queue for a good spot could still be observed. In 1990, the exclusive use of spots by individual fishers was agreed in a meeting with the OBE group. The names of fishing boats were registered on maps of fishing spots to indicate those who were entitled to use rights (Fig. 8). Though the spots were in the territories of individual boats, the distribution was in loose aggregations

146

A. Ikeguchi 128°50′ 00″ E

128°55′ 00″ E

129°00′ 00″ E

129°05′ 00″ E

33°15′ 00″

N

33°10′ 00″

N

N

0

2.5

5

Fishers in Fuefuki district

Fishers in Madarajima district

TURF border

Fig. 8 Territory of grunt fishing boats in Ojika (Source FCA documents)

according to the districts they belonged to. Fishing spots outside the TURF were technically designated for common use with the fishers who belonged to other FCAs. The rule crafted for grunt fishing grounds was not in accordance with the formal fishing law because the government gives permission through the FCA and not with individual fishers. The rule was unsatisfactory for fishers who did not participate in the initial competition stage because they were not given the opportunity to claim spots and were excluded from the fishing grounds. Some FCA executive members also expressed anxiety over the unequal nature of the new rule. The newly emerged resource governance of grunt can be described as a network of three parties in different contexts (Table 4). Through the collective sales of fish at the island scale, the FCA learned how to conduct marketing and quality control. They established a rule that all landing of grunt was to be sold collectively by the FCA. In 1999, the FCA established a local brand of grunt called “Chika-saki” (meaning Ojika’s grunt). The grunt under this brand were caught by a lure, while grunt production in other fishing regions involved live bait. The FCA staff performed strict size sorting and put special labels on fish over 400 g. This box of large grunts was shipped to the Tsukiji market in Tokyo and fetched a high price. According to the FCA manager, the maximum price premium from the branding was 20% of the previous price, and the maximum monthly landing in the season was as high as three million yen per fishing boat. The FCA president appealed that the allocation of spots to individual fishing boats prevented the overexploitation of grunt resources, which is an important component to the value of local brands.

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Table 4 Resource governance of grunt by FCA, fisher’s group, and fisher in Ojika FCA Context Quality control for local grunt brand Rule

OBE group

Fisher

Conflict solution

Maximize landing, sustain trust relationship

Select large-size fish Restriction of illuminance Transfer of the territory (400 g/tail) as special grade of fishing light (