KASAHARA: JAPANESE DISTANT-WATER FISHERIES 



ment, Japan agreed to phase out her fishing ac- 

 tivities in the respective zones within a rela- 

 tively short period of time (5 years for New- 

 Zealand and 7 years for Australia) . Difl^erent 

 forms of compensation and payment have been 

 used, e.g., the Japan-Korea agreement, the Ja- 

 pan-Indonesia agreement, and the Japan-Mau- 

 ritania agreement, sometimes on a large scale. 

 Political trade offs are not unusual either. Jap- 

 anese pragmatism has gone to the extent of con- 

 cluding nongovernmental agreements to settle 

 fishery problems, as seen in negotiations with 

 the People's Republic of China and Indonesia. 

 In the entire history of international fisheries 

 disputes after World War II, Japan has never 

 contested unilateral jurisdictional claims by 

 force. Even at the height of the Japan-Korea 

 dispute, when a large number of Japanese ves- 

 sels were being captured by Korean patrol boats, 

 Japanese patrol boats never opened fire or tried 

 to recapture the vessels by other means. Japan 

 has not challenged the 200-mile territorial sea 

 or fishing limit claimed by Latin American na- 

 tions except by protests through diplomatic chan- 

 nels. In short, despite her rigid position regard- 

 ing the freedom of fishing and limits of national 

 jurisdiction, Japan has in practice accepted var- 

 ious forms of allocation, including the allocation 

 of resources, division of catch, allocation of fish- 

 ing grounds, as well as a system of revenue shar- 

 ing in exchange for giving up the right to exploit 

 a resource on the high seas (fur seal) . She has 

 done so in most cases reluctantly and after long, 

 hard negotiations. 



Means to Control Fisheries to Meet 

 International Problems 



Japan has so far found some way of settling 

 almost every major international fishery dispute, 

 as well as extremely complicated problems of 

 domestic fisheries, some of which were mentioned 

 in connection with the development of trawl fish- 

 eries in Japan. This is not an easy task, if one 

 considers the diversity of fishing and processing 

 activities and the enormous amount of invest- 

 ment in every sector of the industry. What has 

 made it possible for the Japanese government 

 to cope with all these conflicts from various 

 sources is the existence of an effective, central- 



ized system of control as briefly described in the 

 introduction of this paper. The so-called licens- 

 ing system applies to practically all oflFshore fish- 

 eries. Although legal authority is vested in the 

 Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, the Fish- 

 ery Agency, which is subordinate to the Ministry, 

 has in fact full power to control all major fish- 

 eries. Thus, the central government may, and 

 does in practically all cases, restrict the type, 

 number, and often size of the vessels allowed to 

 operate in a given area and/or for a given re- 

 source. Although objectives are diflFerent from 

 case to case and change from time to time, the 

 basic concept is to give the central government 

 a strong means to allocate resources among dif- 

 ferent sectors of the industry to accommodate 

 their conflicting interests. The administration 

 of fisheries under this system is naturally sub- 

 ject to pressures from difl!"erent groups, including 

 large fishing companies, vessel-owner associa- 

 tions, and fishermen's associations, but institu- 

 tional changes are made only through this cen- 

 trally controlled system. The system is also used, 

 in most cases rather eflfectively, to accommodate 

 such changes as the government and industry 

 consider necessary for meeting new internation- 

 al developments or resolving international fish- 

 ery issues. It is, of course, debatable whether 

 this system has in the long run facilitated the 

 rational development of the Japanese industry, 

 for there is no way of telling how the industry 

 would have developed under any other system. 

 Japan can not go back to 1946 and start devel- 

 oping fisheries again. 



Another important factor which has contrib- 

 uted toward facilitating international fishery 

 arrangements is the existence of well-organized 

 associations representing various segments of 

 the industry. As briefly described by Kasahara 

 (1964), the structure of the Japanese fishing 

 industry is one of extreme complexity. There 

 still exist a huge number of small fishing craft, 

 including many nonpowered vessels, while large 

 companies operate gigantic motherships and 

 factoryships. Between these two extremes, there 

 are vast numbers of vessels of all kinds and sizes. 

 The existence of the large fishing companies run- 

 ning most of the important distant-water fish- 

 eries deserves special attention. The following 



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