VI INTERNATIONAL FISHING CONTROVERSIES AND AGREEMENTS 
The fishing controversies of Japan which have been the subject 
of recent international negotiation are four: the long-term Russo- 
Japanese controversy, the Jap&nese-American Bering Sea salmon fishing 
controversy, the Japanese ’’boycott 1 * of the international whaling con¬ 
servation program and the Japanese abrogation of the 1911 Fur-Seal 
Convention, 97/ All of these will require post-war settlement and some 
will require the attention of Military Government officials in regulating 
the Japanese fisheries during the period of occupation. 
The Russo- J apanese Fishing Controversy 
For man;’ decades 'the Japanese fishermen have had the continued 
use of waters along the Russian coasts of the Japan, Okhotsk and Bering 
Seas and have come to look upon this fishery as their own. 93/ In the 
late nineteenth century nationals of Japan were actively engaged in fish¬ 
ing in Russian waters and after the Russo-Japanese War Japan pushed the 
question of defining these fishery rights. The treaty of 190? established 
the basis for the Japanese use of the fishery from that time to the 
present with but minor changes made in later years. This treaty recog¬ 
nized the rights of Japanese to fish along these Russian coasts except 
in rivers and inlets and provided for the establishment of fishery lots 
97/ Japan has also had minor international difficulties involving diplo¬ 
matic exchanges such as those caused by the operations of boats off the 
coast of Central America and in the waters off the Philippine Islands 
where Japanese craft have occasionally been seised on charges of poaching. 
98/ The Japanese claim that the fishing in ”the northern waters’* is 
a right established over a period of two centuries. 
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