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1 results

  • 1 - The Whale Pilgrimage

  • from Part I - Living with Whales, 1600–1850
  • Fynn Holm, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany
  • Book:
    The Gods of the Sea
    Published online:
    10 August 2023
    Print publication:
    24 August 2023, pp 19-38
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  • Summary

    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.