Japanese capital has played an important 

 role in the development of foreign fleets since 

 the early 1960's. Large Japanese trading com- 

 panies handle most of the tuna exported from 

 overseas bases, bases originally established 

 to serve Japanese vessels. As other countries, 

 namely Taiwan and Korea, began to develop 

 fleets, they also used these bases and sold 

 their catches to the Japanese companies. In 

 return, vessels from these countries have re- 

 ceived financial assistance, largely operating 

 capital, from these large companies. A new 

 base opened recently by a large Japanese com- 

 pany in Mombasa, Kenya reportedly is to be 

 used almost entirely by Taiwanese vessels 

 (U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, Febru- 

 ary 24, 1969). However, this Japanese invest- 

 ment must be attributed primarily to the higher 

 labor costs of Japanese vessels not to restric- 

 tions on their number. Under conditions in 

 the Japanese fishery since the mid-1960's, it 

 is doubtful that any significant increase of 

 Japanese vessels operating from these bases 

 could be expected even if the fishery were 

 opened to unlimited entry. 



CONCLUSION 



In retrospect, no one in Japan or elsewhere 

 would consider the regulatory system develop- 

 ed for the Japanese skipjack-tuna fishery to 

 be a complete success. However, few would 

 argue that the fishery and the country were 

 not served better by limitation of entry than 

 they would have been had no controls been 

 imposed on the number of craft. The system 

 did have a goodly measure of success in refer- 

 ence to its main goal, that is, to maintain a 

 high level of economic viability of enter- 

 prises in the fishery. Without it, a gross 

 over-investment in small vessels is almost 

 certain to have taken place in the early 1950's. 

 Depression of the market, strained financial 

 condition of enterprises, and a loss of all 

 economic rent from the fishery likely would 

 have occurred long before the resource ap- 

 proached full exploitation. Conflicts on the 

 fishing grounds, international incidents, and 

 disasters at sea also would have been more 

 numerous. Thus, a second major goal, harmony 

 within the fleet and on the fishing grounds. 



was at least partially achieved. If the system 

 has been less successful since the early 1960's, 

 the fault can hardly be laid at the feet of the 

 fishery policy makers and administrators. 

 Their control over entry of fishermen of other 

 countries ended with Japanese ability to con- 

 trol the technology of the fishery. Had fisher- 

 men from other nations had the wherewithal 

 to enter the fishery from 1950, acceptance 

 of the system by the Japanese fishermen 

 would have been far more difficult to attain. 



Mistakes were made, many of them avoid- 

 able. Perhaps the largest was to raise the 

 minimum size of licensed vessels to 40 tons. 

 That it was done appears to have resulted 

 from an inadequate assessment of technolog- 

 ical developments. Less than 40-ton craft in 

 existence at the time were patently too small 

 to operate on distant grounds but could re- 

 lieve the need for more vessels to exploit the 

 annual runs of skipjack and albacore on near 

 seas grounds. Vessels of 19.99 tons could 

 never be designed for effective operation on 

 distant grounds. However, redesign of vessels 

 of 39.99 tons led to craft with the fishing power 

 of a 70-ton vessel designed by standards used 

 in the mid-1950's. At the catch rates and 

 prices of tuna in the late 1950's, these vessels 

 could operate profitably on distant grounds 

 although the large number of disasters sug- 

 gest they should not have attempted to do so. 

 The problem of safety was corrected only by 

 granting permission to increase size of these 

 vessels to 50 tons with the provision that the 

 additional tonnage would be used only to in- 

 crease crew comfort and safety and limiting 

 their use to waters adjacent to Japan. How- 

 ever, the number of such vessels far exceeds 

 needs and the problem of overcapitalization 

 has been far more intractable. 



Some lawmakers and administrators were 

 troubled also by the tremendous value that 

 the licenses came to have at no cost to the 

 holders of the licenses. Had the tremendous 

 expansion of the fishery and its profitable- 

 ness been foreseen at the time the fishery was 

 brought under regulation, some means pos- 

 sibly could have been devised to siphon off 

 at least part of the economic rent represented 

 by the licenses into the public coffers. How- 

 ever, to have worked out an acceptable scheme 

 for the fishery after the basic system was al- 



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