Chapter 1 describes the yearly migration of thousands of whales along the Japanese coast – often imagined as a pilgrimage by Japanese observers – and the impact this had on Japanese coastal ecosystems. Humans in the Japanese archipelago made use of stranded whales early on, but it was not until the 1570s that some fishing communities in western Japan started to actively target whales. It is argued that the dissemination of organised whaling was closely linked to the rise of the fish fertiliser proto-industry. To fulfil the demand for marine fertiliser, fishermen from the central Kii domain developed new fishing and whaling techniques. After overfishing their own coast, they began following the migration route of whales across the archipelago in search of new fishing grounds, disseminating fish and whaling techniques to other regions of Japan.

Chapter 4 discusses the failed attempt to introduce whaling in Northeast Japan in the early nineteenth century. The frequent strandings of whales had piqued the interest of whale scholars, such as Ōtsuki Heisen and his cousin Ōtsuki Gentaku, who both promoted the establishment of proto-industrial whaling in the North. In their eyes, whaling would not only bring economic wealth to the northern domains, but whalers could also function as a part-time navy that could protect the Japanese border against intrusion from European powers such as Russia. Based on the works of these whale scholars, new attempts to introduce whaling in northeastern Japan were conducted in the early nineteenth century to combat the Tenpō famine (1833–7). However, due to the increased whaling activities of the American pelagic and Japanese coastal whalers, as well as the reduced abundance of zooplankton and small fishes like sardines, whales were probably scarcer in northeastern Japan, making it almost impossible to conduct a profitable whaling venture at that time.