CHAPTER VII 

 A JAPANESE WHALE HUNT 



AFTER spending a delightful month at Oshima, 

 where three fine whale skeletons were secured, 

 I returned to Shimonoseki to send them to 

 New York, and then traveled northward to Aikawa, 

 three hundred miles from Tokyo. Aikawa is a typi- 

 cal little fishing village, situated at the end of a beauti- 

 ful bay which sometimes harbors as many as fourteen 

 whale ships from the four neighboring stations. 



In the early spring finbacks and an occasional blue 

 whale are taken there, but in June and July sei and 

 sperm whales arrive in great numbers. The sei whale 

 (the iu'ashi kiijira, or sardine whale of the Japanese) 

 is an exceedingly interesting species which, to the sci- 

 entific world, had been unknown in the Pacific Ocean 

 until my visit, although it had formed the basis of 

 the Japanese summer fishery for twelve or fifteen 

 years. My first hunt for sei whales resulted in a 

 very exciting experience and one which in modern 

 whaling is comparatively rare. 



A series of violent storms which kept the ships in- 

 side had been raging along the coast, but at last the 

 clouds began to break one evening and gather into 

 great fleecy mountains of white, now and then drift- 

 ing away enough to show the moon behind. The bad 



