276 BULLETIN OF THE BUBEAU OF FISHERIES. 



THE SALMON AND TKOTJT, "SAKE," "MASU," "bENIMASU." 



Oncorkynchus keta (Walbaum); 0. hisutch (Walbauru); O. ncrfat (Walbaum). 



The salmon that is must widely distributed and most abundant in Japan is the 

 "sake" or dog salmon ( Oncorkynchus fa /")• It ascends all the rivers of Hokkaido and 

 the northern half of Honshu down to near the Hay of Tokyo, and is one of the most 

 important wealth-producing hshes in Hokkaido. In olden times, when the annual 

 catch was not as great as at the present day, there does not seem to have been any 

 necessity for artificial culture. Still there were some attempts at the propagation of 

 the fish. For instance, on the Sammen River, in the province of Echigo, salmon 

 fishing was prohibited in a branch of the river and the salmon which entered it were 

 caught only after they deposited eggs and by the daimio to whom the district belonged, 

 thus securing an income for him and some safety for the salmon eggs. It was a very 

 imperfect method, hut still an attempt at propagation, and is even at the present day 

 practiced at the same place. 



The modern method of salmon culture is taken bodily from the American 

 method, so I can communicate nothing that is new in America. As early as 1876 a Mr. 

 Sekizawa, then an officer of the home department, inspected and carefully examined 

 salmon and trout culture in America, and on his return started experimenting on 

 them, which was largely imitated in the hope that these delicious fishes might he 

 easily increased and propagated. Hut these undertakings were mostly on too small a 

 scale and no important results came of them, except that Chuzenji Lake at Nikko 

 was stocked with some American trout about this time and has since become tolerably 

 full of fish. 



Meanwhile the salmon fishery in Hokkaido was going on upon a destructive scale. 

 and matters came to such a pass in the eighties of the last century that a need of 

 artificial propagation was strongly felt, and an expert of the Hokkaido government. 

 Mr. K. Ito. was sent over to America to examine into the system of salmon culture 

 there carried on. On his return Mr. Ito established, in 1888, a hatchery at Chitose, 

 on one of tin' upper branches of the Ishikari River. It was modeled after the 

 hatchery at Craig Brook, Me. By the efforts of Mr. Ito and his successors and by 

 the able superintendence of Mr. Fujimura, th# hatchery, which has been enlarged 

 several times, has now become the center of salmon culture (pi. VII, tig. '2). It com- 

 prises an area of over 30 acres and hatches annually 8,000,000 to 14,000,000 "sake" 

 eggs, besides a much smaller number of trout ("masu") eggs. All the hatched fry 

 are liberated in the Ishikari River system. 



Besides the central hatchery at Chitose there are seventeen smaller hatcheries 

 scattered all over Hokkaido, maintained by private fisheries associations with some 

 government aid. All of these hatch between L, 000,000 and 5,000,000 eggs, while 

 the largest of them, at Nishibetsu, may go up as high as 8,000,000. We may there- 

 fore assume that something like 35,000,000 to 50,000,000 eggs -being 37.000.1)00 in 

 Inn:; are annually liberated in Hokkaido. 



Besides those in Hokkaido there are some five hatcheries on the main island- 

 Honshu — supported by the live northern prefectures (Niigata, Akita, Mivagi. 

 Awomori, and Ibareki). All of these establishments, however, are small, the largest 

 (Niigata) hatching only a little over 2,000,000 eggs. 



