6 



do not present the regular, unl^roken seasons with the steady winds 

 and rare storms almost confined to well-known seasons and to well- 

 defined zones of the Madras waters; the winds shift indeed to certain 

 quarters at certain seasons but they are liable at any moment to grave 

 disturbances and tempests, due possibly in part to the mountainous 

 character of the country from which storms seem to swoop down on 

 the home waters, while the typhoons of summer and the storms of 

 winter are notorious. Consequently the seas are not only rough for 

 a considerable part of the year but dangerous, and boats are too often 

 bIo\Tn out to aea and swamped; the average annual number recorded 

 is about 1,300, and in a storm a few weeks ago 132 boats and 800 

 men were destroyed in a single locality. The climate, too, for a large 

 part of the year, especially in the north where the herring, cod, etc., 

 fisheries are so prolific, is severe, the bitterest cold weather with 

 abundance of ice and snow prevailing for many montlis in the great 

 fishing centre of Hokkaido and the northern districts. Consequently 

 the Japanese fishermen have become a liardj, venturesome race who 

 habitually go many miles out to sea in frail pinewood boats mostly of 

 no structural strength, small, wholly undecked, and without shelter, 

 save that of mats, for the crew, and of very defective sailing powers. 

 The work of the Japanese navy in the late war, largely manned as it 

 was by men drawn from this class, is intelligible enough, especially 

 when hardihood is coupled with that facility for grasping new methods 

 which the fishermen are already showing in their ordinary industry. 



8. A.S will be shown later on, the fisher folk are very poor and 

 usually indebted for working funds to capitalists, but their groups of 

 neat wooden cottages are a contrast to the fishing hamlets (kuppams) 

 of the Madras Coasts, while the neighbouring foreshores, which in 

 this Presidency are often filthy with nuisances, may be walked on with 

 perfect safet}'. Under the law which mtikes education universal, they 

 are educated like the rest of the community and aie thus able to under- 

 stand and to accept intelligently the new teachings prescribed to them 

 in the Fishery schools, in the universal associations (see infra), and by 

 the Experimental Stations. 



9. Hislori/. — Up to the time of the Restoration (1807) the fisheries 

 remained in thoir primitive condition ; population was moderate and 

 increased but slowly ; Japan was isolated from the outer world, and 

 beyond a small trade, chiefly with China and Korea in foreign ships, 

 there was little external movement in marine products ; by a strange 

 law of the 17th century direct foreign trade and emigration were 

 wholly prevented by a stringent limitation of the size and rig of all 

 Japanese vessels (only one mast was allowed) and by a death penalty 

 for the crime of going abroad. Hence Japanese fisheries could not 

 profit by foreign experience and the stimulus both of foreign trade 

 and of a rapidly increasing home population was also wanting. Up 



