be hunted alternately every third year, required a special flag to be flown by licensed 
vessele, and provided that all skins must be entered for stamping at Shikotan. 
However, as Stejneger (idem) pointed out, not only were these regulations utterly 
ansuitable for the protection of the seals but they were never enforced. They could not 
be made effective against the foreign vessels, and the government was not overly concerned 
in the matter at the time. After all, seal and seal otter hunting had not yet become "big 
business". Most of it was conducted on what then were distant shores in which Japan did 
not have much interest, and the few vessels eo engaged, though largely manned by Japanese 
crews, were owned and captained by local resident foreigners who "knew all the angles* and 
how best to evade any restrictive regulation. Nor was local public sentizent much con- 
cerned, as can be seen from the dearth of titles in the bibliography previous to 1891. 
The situation changed abruptly in 1892, and events thereafter developed very 
rapidly. The immediate cause was the Paris Tribunal arbitration of the United States- 
Canadian dispute, which temporarily closed the eastern Bering Sea to pelagic sealing and 
foreed the entire American and Canadian sealing fleets to seek better hunting grounds to 
the westward. Some of these vessels operated near Robben and the Commander Islands, but 
most of them eventually visited the comparatively unworked watere off Japan. 
The first pelagic sealer to operate in Japanese waters was apparently the C. G. 
White which, having no competition, made good catches off Honshu and Hokkaido in 1690 and 
1691. The White was joined by at least a dozen more vessels in 1892, but the real influx 
began in 1693. In that year 42 English and American ships brought 38,000 seal ekins into 
Hakodate harbor alone, and probably at least half ae many more vessels sailed after the 
season directly to Yokohama, the Bonins, or straight across the Pacific to American and 
Canadian porte without reporting their catches in Japan, As thie sealing was right in 
their own back yard, the Japanese could not help but take note of it. 
Their reaction was immediate and vigorous, for they found much that wae objection- 
able in the activities of the Canadiane and Americans who used their ports and hunted seale 
in the waters immediately off their shores. The behavior of the foreign crews ashore, 
which undoubtedly was not strictly up to accepted standards either American, European, or 
Japanese, caused some criticiam and antagonism, but the Japanese mainly resented the for- 
eign exploitation of a native aquatic resource which they themselves had been unable to 
devslop because of lack of knowledge and equipment. Knowing that the seal supply wae not 
inexhaustible and that the foreign exploitation was at Japan's expense, they regarded the 
foreign sealers as poachers. The sealers justifiably resented this term of opprobrium 
because they were in truth breaking no lawe in Japanese waters. Thay could be considered 
poachers only when they raided land colonies, of which none remained in Japan, the Kuril 
colonies having long since disappearsd. The sealere' only operations near Japan were on 
the high seas beyond the three-mile limit, where Japanese law had no jurisdiction. As they 
had no recourse to law without an international agreement of some sort, the only way the 
Japaness could discourage the hardy opportunists who were exploiting their seals was to 
beat them at their own game. This they did, starting from ecratch, in a secant five years. 
A review of the literature from 1892 to 1896 shows the trend of events. A peti- 
tion was presented to the Diet for subsidies to enable Japanese pelagic fisheries to com 
pete with foreign vessels (Bibl 20). But governmente make haste slowly, and not until five 
years later, in 1897 when the need was almost over, were these subsidies granted (Bibl 103, 
106, 106). Meanwhile the Bureau of Fisheries of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce 
wae delegated to make a etudy of the sealing industry. Ite first major publication on the 
eubject (Bibl 48) gave all details available from foreign literature, mostly American and 
Englieh, and delineated the history of veal legislation up to and including the resulte of 
the Parie Tribunal arbitration. It also included a little information gathered from the 
local pelagic sealers themselves. 
More practical steps were taken by the Dai Nippon Suisan Kaisha (Imperial Fisher- 
ies Co), the leading Japanese commercial fisheries concern. Sarly in 1893 this company 
outfitted two of its vessels, the Chishima Maru Ho 1 and the Chiehima Maru No 3, to try 
1? 
