to tlie date in question, raoroovor, tlio country was split up into about 

 270 feudal estates larf^ely independent of central authority and governed 

 by local chieftains (Daimios) ; interconnnunication was difficult and 

 fisheries were rcuulatLMl by local usages and taxed according to local 

 necessities or fancies. The resources of the sea were little attended 

 to by the local authorities and though there were rules for the protec- 

 tion of fish, these were, at least partly, dictated by religious ideas 

 regarding the sanctity of animal life. Merchants and capitalists, 

 however, appear to have put capital into the business, owning large nets 

 and financing the fishing population, usunlly on the sharing principle, 

 and assisting them in bad times ; lience on the one hand a certain 

 amount of control of the fishermen by capital, and on the other the 

 advantage that capital was accustomed to the business and ready to 

 undertake developments when the Restoration provided the opportunity. 

 Moreover, owing to disputes between the farmers who owned or claimed 

 rights over the foreshore, and the inshore fishermen, rules and customs 

 had sprung up by which the rights and limitations of local fisheries 

 were defined and certain close times and other jirotective usages had 

 sprung up, while these very disputes and the necessity for working 

 large fisheries in common, had accustomed tlie fishermen to associate in 

 groups, a matter of importance in considering the success of the fishery 

 associations established by recent law. Everything however was j^rimi- 

 tive and confined within moderate sea limits and hereditary methods ; 

 Professor Matsubara, present Head of the Imperial Fisheries Training 

 Institute, describes it as the period of chaos, but this can only be taken 

 in the sense that the methods in use and the business in general were 

 unorganized, without central direction, protection, or stimulus. 



10. But with the Restoration (18G7) came an immediate change; 

 the regime had hardly begun when the proper control and develop- 

 ment of the fisheries were seen both by the authorities and by the 

 more intelligent of the people, to be an absolute necessity. 'I'he first 

 overt steps were taken by Government who, on behalf of the Sovereign, 

 resumed by edict the control of the whole foreshore nnd of the inshore 

 waters, but declared that the rights of the fishermen and others should 

 continue to be governed by local usage. This contained the germ 

 of that deliberate, far-sighted, organized pi-omotion of fisheries, by 

 Government and people alike, which seem to me the central lesson 

 of my Japanese fishery studies. For when Government assumed 

 administrative rights over fisheries it equally accepted, as in agri- 

 culture and other industries, correlative duties such as the protection 

 and development of the State^s public assets in its fisheries, the 

 increase of the food and manure supply for the general population, 

 the promotion of the arts of obtaining, preserving and cultivating 

 its aquatic products, the development cf a foreign trade in improved 

 fflariue products, the welfare of the fisher population economically, 



