THE FISHERIES OF JAPAN CONSIDERED FROM A 
GEOGRAPHICAL STANDPOINT. 
ad 
By T. KITAHARA, Ph. D., 
Imperial Fisheries Bureau of Japan. 
a 
It is a well-known fact that the Japanese are among the most extensively 
fish-eating people of the world. The average annual consumption of fish in 
Japan, to my estimation, is nearly 50 pounds per head, a high average not sur- 
passed by other nations, except the Norwegians and the Canadians. Although 
the preference for fish as an article of food is said to have originated from some 
religious belief in the old time, now the people of Japan are in the position of 
being forced to take it as the most important diet, because they have very 
small pasture for raising cattle, while there are seas to fish near at hand all 
around the country. 
The Empire of Japan, as you know, stands off the northeast coast of Asia, 
stretching from southwest to northeast for nearly 3,000 miles, and from the 
tropical to nearly the frigid zone, washed by the warm as well as the cold 
currents. Thus it can be seen that Japan, so far as the maritime conditions 
are concerned, is much like the Eastern States of North America. The Gulf 
Stream may be compared with the Japan Current, the Labrador Current with 
the Kurile Current, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, probably, with the Japan Sea. 
The fishes which inhabit the waters of Japan are also like those of America to 
some extent, as regards both character and distribution. 
But unfortunately we lack such great fishing banks as the Grand Banks 
off Newfoundland, the Georges Bank off Cape Cod, etc. On the contrary, 
Japan has the deep abysses along the east coast which are useless for the fishing 
industry, but give rise to the terrible earthquakes and awful tidal waves that 
at times destroy lives and property along the shore. This condition seriously 
affects the development of the fisheries in that part of the country. In fact, 
the Japanese islands, being as a whole steeply built, have but few submarine 
plateaus. The area within the 1oo-fathom line, i. e., the continental shelf, is 
only about 77,000 square miles, while that of the Chinese and the Korean seas 
comprises nearly 200,000 square miles, and that of North America about 
1,000,000 square miles. 
377 
