IV. MARKETING AND CONSUMPTION 
Domestic Marketing and Consumption 
Do mestic Marketing . Little information is available concerning 
domestic marketing of marine products. Only the few general statements 
given here can be made and even these cannot be fully substantiated with 
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details. 
Japanese statistics placed the value of marine products consumed 
domestically in prewar years at ¥ 440,000,000. No figures are available 
for the volume consumed, but the total domestic disappearance of fish, 
shellfish, crustaceans and molluscs (in terms of the fresh products) may 
be estimated at three million tons annually for years immediately pre¬ 
ceding the war. Of this amount about 2.2 million tons were consumed as 
food and the remainder processed into fertilizer and oil. 
The larger commercial fishing operators sold domestically to the 
city markets whereas the village fishermen sold chiefly to the small 
towns and villages. There were, however, exceptions to this general 
statement for some groups of village fishermen sold into urban markets. 
In the coastal fishing areas distribution to many families was 
simple — the fisherman's family ate part of the catch. The major part 
of the production, however, was transported to markets either by the 
fishermen themselves or by brokers who went to the coastal villages for 
-the purpose of collecting the products. Some of the small village fisher¬ 
men sold cooperatively through their village societies (gyogyo kumiai); 
other fishermen contracted to sell all their catch to companies. The 
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16-03 l Pi72 bu 
