IWC/41/SE1 SOCIO-ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF A ZERO CATCH LIMIT ON DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS AND RELATED ACTIVITIES IN HOKKAIDO AND MIYAGI PREFECTURES, JAPAN The attached report contains important information on socio-economic implications of a zero catch limit. The Government of Japan, therefore, submits this report as one of its documents to the IWC for reference to the Working Group on Socio-Economic Implications of a Zero Catch Limit. 1989 Socio-Economic Implications of a Zero Catch Limit on Distribution Channels and Related Activities in Hokkaido and Miyagi Prefectures, Japan Theodore C. Bestor Department of Anthropology Columbia University February 18, 1989 This background report is for use of the Institute of Cetacean Research in preparation of materials for submission to the International Whaling Commission’s Ad Hoc Working Group on Socio-Economic Implications of a Zero Catch Limit. It may not be circulated, cited, or quoted for any other purpose without the written permission of the author. CONTENTS Miyagi Prefecture (especially Ayukawa) in many direct Executive Summary ..................................................... 71 ways: Introduction .................................................................. 72 — on employment in enterprises involved in whaling Impact on Employment, on Family Life, production, processing, and distribution, and hence and on Family Enterprises..................................... 72 on the life of families whose livelihood had Impact on Customary Social Relations ....................... 73 depended on this employment; Impact on Consumption and Demand ......................... 74 — on the viability of family enterprises that in some Impact on Retail and Wholesale Enterprises .............. 75 cases are several generations old; Impact on the Oshika-cho Maritime Wholesale — on customary social relations, patterns of reciprocal Market .................................................................... 76 gifting, and other social rituals within whaling Other Economic Impacts ............................................. 77 communities; Mariculture — on the viability of key institutions in the general Tourism maritime economy of Ayukawa, such as the Other Observations ...................................................... 78 Maritime Wholesale Market and the Fisheries Public Health Concerns Cooperative Association; Bibliography................................................................. 78 — on other economic foundations of community life, Appendix I: Research Methods ................................... 79 such as tourism; and, Appendix II: Statistical Tables .................................... 80 — on patterns of consumption influenced by the List of Tables ............................................................... 80 strongly-held dietary preferences of local consumers. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The impact of the zero catch limit is particularly Anthropological field research on the lives of people evident in Ayukawa, where the impact is intensified by involved in small-type coastal whaling (henceforth the concentration of whaling activities, processing and STCW), the distribution of whale meat, and related distribution, consumption, and whale-related social and activities was undertaken in Hokkaido and Miyagi ritual activity all largely centered on a single small, Prefectures, Japan, during the Spring and Fall of 1988, isolated community. In Hokkaido, where these the first year in which the taking of minke whales was constellations of activities are more geographically totally banned. dispersed, the impact is not so immediately evident, The imposition of the zero catch limit has had impact though it is clearly as severe in its effects on the “core on communities in Hokkaido (especially Abashiri) and whaling community” (Iwasaki 1988). 71 IWC/41/SE1 This background report is based on field research in members as owner-operators, eight crew members, one Hokkaido in October 1988 and in Miyagi Prefecture in chief flenser (also a relative), and four to five part-time December 1988, with some additional information collected flensers. With the cessation of whaling, all but one of the in April 1988 (in Miyagi) and between October 1988 and owner-operators were fired or laid off and forced to find January 1989 in Tokyo. This field research primarily alternate employment. The other whaling operation included focused on the structure of the various channels of its owner-operator, a crew of seven, and five workers in a distribution for whale products, the networks of social ties processing workshop. During the 1988 season operations that link producers, distributors, and consumers both kept going, hunting beaked and pilot whales, but the formally and informally, and the social organization of the processing workers were fired when the processing various family enterprises and other social units that workshop was closed, and the owner-operator expressed distribute, process, and consume whale products(1). grave doubts that the operation can continue in the future. During the field trips in October and December 1988, The immediate employment impact on local a total of 51 people were interviewed including whalers, wholesalers and others involved in the primary distribution distributors and processors of whale meat products, retailers of whale meat has been mixed. In both Abashiri and and wholesalers, people in other maritime industries, Ayukawa all these firms are family-enterprises(3), generally officials of Fisheries Cooperative Associations (FCAs), employing no more than three or four people all of whom officials of wholesale markets, officials of local are family members. Some have simply gone out of governments, and other residents of whaling communities. business; others have switched into new lines of business In addition, published and unpublished statistical data was or refocused their energies on other existing lines of business collected wherever possible. (e.g., a whale wholesaler who now makes his income from his former sideline as a small-scale rice dealer). The impact INTRODUCTION on distributors and others at this level will be discussed in This background report discusses aspects of the socio- more detail below, in the section on Impact on Retail and economic impact of the implementation of the zero catch Wholesale Enterprises. limit on minke whales taken in the coastal waters off The difficulties of finding new employment for males Hokkaido and Miyagi Prefectures, Japan. displaced from whaling and processing are common topics This moratorium took effect on April 1, 1988, at what of conversation among people formerly active in whaling would normally have been the beginning of the six-month in Abashiri and Ayukawa. One official of Oshika-cho in smalltype coastal whaling (STCW) season for minke whales charge of the town’s economic planning section estimated as regulated by the Government of Japan, which in recent that the earnings of the average whaler who managed to years has set a total quota of slightly over 300 minke find a land-based job declined by about half. But he, and whales(2) for the nine STCW vessels licensed by the others, noted that many former whalers were unable to find Government. jobs in the immediate area and had been forced to move to This report focuses primarily on the impact that the other towns and cities in search of work(4). moratorium has had or may have on: employment and the In recent years Oshika-cho’s maritime economy has organization of traditional family enterprises; on customary attempted to diversify, primarily through intensive social relationships within whaling communities; on maricultivation of silver salmon, in large off-shore consumption patterns and culturally determined food enclosures that dot the bay of Ayukawa and those of nearby preferences; on various levels of retail and wholesale settlements. (For additional discussion of mariculture, see activity, particularly on the viability of institutions in section below, entitled Other Economic Impacts.) Oshika-cho (Ayukawa); and, on other economic strategies Although salmon cultivation has provided some including mariculture and tourism. employment opportunities for displaced whalers — and This background report is based on field research in indeed several former whaling-related concerns, including Hokkaido in October 1988 and in Miyagi Prefecture in a whaling boat owner and a former whale wholesaler who December 1988. have branched out into or have replaced their former activities with salmon cultivation — it has not absorbed all IMPACT ON EMPLOYMENT, ON FAMILY the displaced labor. And many whalers find that the work LIFE, AND ON FAMILY ENTERPRISES of salmon cultivation is physically more arduous than The loss of employment resulting from the cessation whaling; whalers and officials report lower back pains and of STCW is, of course, most directly felt by whalers and hand injuries are common among workers on the salmon those who had been employed in the primary stages of pens. processing and distribution. Officials of the Oshika Fisheries Cooperative In Abashiri, for example, the two local whaling Association (FCA) and others directly involved in whaling operations employed crew members, flensers, processors, operations in the past spoke about the increase in working and clerical personnel totalling 30 people, many of them wives among whalers and whale processors, and the related to one another. One operation had four family difficulties that these women faced both in finding work 72 Socio-Economic