ABSTRACT
The method of killing also changed with time In earlier operations at Kawana (34°56′N, 139°07′E) on the coast of the Izu Peninsula (34°37′N-35°05′N, 138°45′E-139°10′E; Figure 31) first, a group of dolphins were separated from the main school and herded to shore Then young men entered the water and brought the live dolphins up on shore for slaughter and processing In the 1960s, the Kawana fishermen used hooks on long poles to take live animals to the shore In the 1970s, they cut the dolphin’s throat at the boat side, tied a rope to the tail peduncle, and brought the dolphins up on the shore with a crane (fourth-eighth colored photo) (Kasuya and Miyazaki 1982; Kasuya and Miyashita 1989, in Japanese) In the 1980s, the drive fishermen at Taiji (33°37′N, 135°55′E) hand harpooned dolphins in the net, drew them up, and then killed them by lancing More recently, they insert a knife into the medulla oblongata for a quicker death This method might be seen more humane by outsiders, but pulling the live dolphin to the boat remains a difficult task
Drive fisheries for small-cetaceans target schooling species However, the school has to be of sufficient size to compensate for the labor spent in the operation This explains why there have been no records of driving porpoises in Japan (they do not occur in large schools) The method could have originated from an opportunistic operation at a local community when a suitable animal school was found near the shore Examples of such a dolphin fishery that are not limited to Japan are known from Newfoundland, the Orkney Islands, and the Shetland Islands (eg, Tudor et al 1883; Madsen 1992), and the method is still used in the Faroe Islands (Joensen 1976; Bloch 2007), where catch statistics have been recorded since the sixteenth century (Zachariassen 1993)
A cove or inlet with a deep and narrow entrance and broad interior is believed to be suitable for a dolphin drive Inlets at Arari (34°50′N, 138°46′E) and Heda (34°58′N, 138°47′E) on the Izu coasts and Yamada Cove (39°25′N, 142°00′E) in Iwate Prefecture (38°55′N-40°27′N) on the Pacific coast of northern Honshu (which is a Japanese main island extending
c. 33°25′N-45°30′N and 130°57′E-142°05′E) are such examples Some particular shores are more likely to see strandings of cetaceans A hypothesis of local geomagnetic anomalies has been proposed to explain this (Kirschvink 1990; Klinowska 1990) It assumes that dolphins use geomagnetic anomalies as a supplemental clue in navigation, and they are likely to be stranded in places where lines of equal geomagnetic anomaly cross the coast Among several explanations proposed for causes of cetacean stranding, the hypothesis of geomagnetic anomalies is the one most supported by scientists Villagers near such locations would have more opportunities for driving and for developing a drive fishery If some members of a dolphin school are stranded, other members tend to remain in the vicinity Such behavior helped the emergence of dolphin drive fisheries It would be worthwhile to examine the geomagnetic environment of places with a long history of dolphin drive fisheries in Japan
The Mawaki (37°18′N, 137°13′E) site on the east coast of Noto Peninsula (c. 36°50′N-37°30′N, 136°40′E-137°20′E) is a well-known archaeological site ranging from 6,000 to 2,000 years BC, a later period of the Jomon Era (14,0001,000 years BC; various opinions exist about the dates) that produced a large number of dolphin skeletons Hiraguchi (1986, in Japanese) identified them using the morphology of the cervical vertebrae and reported that the majority were Pacific white-sided dolphin and Delphinus sp (cf D. capensis) representing 143 individuals, followed by bottlenose dolphins (12), a pilot whale, and a Risso’s dolphin In addition, he identified a mandible attributable to a false killer whale Identification of skulls and mandibles led to similar tallies, with the highest number being Pacific white-sided dolphins and common dolphins followed by a smaller number of bottlenose dolphins (Hiraguchi 1993, in Japanese) Because the excavation covered only a limited portion of the expected range of the site, caution was required before reaching firm conclusions about the species composition in the fishing activity at the time However, the presence of such gregarious dolphin species suggests that there were dolphin drives, and the multiple species suggest that the bones represent more than one operation However, it is unclear whether the people assisted dolphins to be stranded, drove dolphin schools found in the inlet, or even drove them from outside the inlet
Numerous lance heads made of stone were recovered from the Mawaki site Hiraguchi (1990, in Japanese) correctly interpreted them as used to stab the dolphins They were likely to have been used purely for killing purposes, not for connecting
animals to the hunter Since a dolphin carcass usually sinks, it is necessary to attach a line to the animal if it is to be killed at a distance from the shore, and a detachable harpoon head or barbed lance is necessary for the purpose; these have not been recovered from the Mawaki site Thus, I conclude that the Mawaki people of the Jomon Era used stone lances to kill dolphins in shallow waters when the animals were unable to escape Such a situation could occur either with naturally stranded animals or those driven to the shore
This scenario is similar to the dolphin drive fishery at Mawaki village in the nineteenth century as described in Suisan Hosai Shi (Records of Fishery Activities) by Noshomu-sho Suisan-kyoku (Bureau of Fisheries of Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce) (1911, in Japanese) It describes a series of steps: (1) drive the dolphin school close to shore, (2) encircle the school with a large-mesh net, (3) hold a dolphin in the water and direct it toward the beach (as a dolphin cannot swim backward, it proceeds to the shallows), and (4) kill the dolphin with a lance This method avoids the problem of retrieving dolphin carcasses from the bottom in deeper water and rather
lar procedure is also found in an illustration depicting the dolphin drive fishery in Nagasaki Prefecture, northern Kyushu, published in Gyogyo Shi (Records of Fisheries [in Nagasaki Prefecture]) (Nagasaki-ken 1896, in Japanese), which states that fishermen in the water hold dolphins, direct them toward the shore, and make them strand (to be killed)
Kasuya and Yamada (1995, in Japanese) interpreted old common names of dolphins along the coasts of the Sea of Japan and East China Sea (northern Kyushu) based on descriptions and illustrations of Kizaki (1773, in Japanese): niudou is okigondo (current name of false killer whale), handou is handoiruka (bottlenose dolphin), and hase is hase-iruka (Delphinus capensis) Niudou and nyudo mean an enlightened Buddhist with shaved head There is uncertainty about the meaning of handou and hando, which could have meant a state before an enlightenment but could also have meant the comical actor in kabuki drama, a crowded noisy situation, or even a water tub (also see Section 382) They were unable to identify dolphins called nezumi and shiratago (also see Section 36) In the 1970s, fishermen in northern Kyushu and nearby Iki Island (33°47′N, 129°43′E) called every dolphin species with a long beak nezumi or nezumi-iruka, because they say they produce sounds like nezumi (mouse or rat) Phocoena phocoena is called currently in Japan nezumi-iruka, but the species has not been reported off northern Kyushu Similar old names used in the drive fishery on the Izu coasts might have meant other species (see Section 382) We need to be cautious in identifying the species names of the 1700s
The Record of Fisheries mentioned earlier (Nagasaki-ken 1896, in Japanese) gave a list of dolphins taken in the prefecture Nyu-dou-iruka (popularly known as bouzu-iruka,) and hase-iruka (popularly known as ma-wiruka [sic]) The former was stated to resemble the goto-kujira (pilot whale, cf Globicephala) but measures 6-9 m and has small tarotuber-like teeth This is the oki-gondo (false killer whale) of the present day The latter is stated to be found with the former species and measures from 5-6 shaku (a shaku is almost equal to a foot) to 7-8 shaku It seems to represent Delphinus sp Bottlenose dolphins often form mixed schools with false killer whales but grow to over 3 m (10 ft)
As cited earlier, the Records of Fishery Activities by Noshomu-sho Suisan-kyoku (Bureau of Fisheries of Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce) (1911, in Japanese) stated that people along Uonome Nishimura Bay in Arikawa (32°58′N, 129°07′E) in Goto Islands (see Section 35) operated a drive fishery since around 1688-1703 with known targets of two dolphin species, that is, ma-iruka or hase-iruka and nyudo-iruka or bauzu-iruka, and that villagers of Mawaki and other nearby villages on Noto Peninsula drove three species of dolphins: ma-iruka, nyudo-iruka, and kamairuka or shisumi-iruka
The previously mentioned old names of dolphins and current interpretations are in Table 31 Pilot whales (Globicephala spp.) are very rare in the Sea of Japan and off northern Kyushu Instead, false killer whales (Kasuya 1975; Tamura et al 1986, in Japanese; Kasuya et al. 1988) are often found there Therefore, aquarium staff in northern Kyushu
in the 1970s meant false killer whales by the word gondo (pilot whales or blackfishes) Similar cases are seen in recent records of fishermen and statistics
The genus Delphinus was once considered to contain a single species with two geographical forms, but now the geographical variation is interpreted to represent two species of worldwide distribution, D. delphs and D. capensis with subspecies D. c. tropicalis (Jefferson and Van Waerebeek 2002), or three species of D. delphis, D. capensis, and D. tropicalis, with distribution of the third species limited to coastal waters extending from the Arabian Sea to the South China Sea (Rice 1998)
It was known in Japan that the hase-iruka from the Tsushima Islands (see Section 33) area, off northern Kyushu, has a longer beak and more teeth than the ma-iruka off the Sanriku (see Section 37) region on the Pacific coasts
D. capensis, inhabiting the Pacific coast of southwestern Japan, East China Sea and perhaps Sea of Japan, and the latter to D. delphis off the Pacific coast of northern Japan
The Records of Fishery Activities by Noshomu-sho Suisan-kyoku (Bureau of Fisheries of Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce) (1911, in Japanese) stated that the dolphin drive method was best known at Mawaki in Takakura village, which was followed by Ogi (37°18′N, 137°14′N), Ushitsu (37°18′N, 137°09′E), Nakai (37°14′N, 137°14′E), and others Nakai village is situated at the northwestern corner of Nanao Cove, which is broad inside and opens to the west coast of Toyama Bay (c. 37°N, 137°15′E) Another two villages known to have dolphin drive fisheries are on the northwestern shore of Toyama Bay These locations are on the east side of Noto Peninsula in the southern Sea of Japan
The fishing season was from late March to late July, with a peak in May and June The dolphin species caught were ma-iruka (present hase-iruka or D. capensis), nyudo-iruka (present oki-gondo or false killer whale), kama-iruka, or shisumi-iruka (present kama-iruka or Pacific white-sided dolphin) The Tsushima Current, which is a branch of the warm Kuroshio Current, flows northward along the Sea of Japan coast of Honshu and increases in strength during March to July The fishing season coincides with the time when these species expand their range northward from spring to early summer
The Mawaki site of dolphin hunting in the Jomon era and Mawaki Village that carried out modern dolphin drives in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are identical in location, and all the other villages with modern dolphin drives on the Noto coasts are located close to each other It is still to be confirmed whether the fishery continued for thousands of years at the same location The species composition in the two periods has the two common elements of Delphinus sp and Pacific white-sided dolphin, but they disagree in the limited abundance of false killer whales in the catch of the Jomon Era The reason for the disagreement cannot be concluded at present, because the Mawaki site has been only partially excavated and we are uncertain how the currently available species composition represents the catch composition of the time
Descriptions of the dolphin drives on the coasts of Noto Peninsula in modern time are available in three references: (1) Noto-koku Saigyo Zue (Illustrated Fisheries in Noto) manuscript dated 1838 and reprinted in Kitamura (1995, in Japanese), (2) Dai-2-kai Suisan Hakurankai Shinsa Hokoku (Examination Report of Items Exhibited at the Second Fishery Exposition) by Kaneda and Niwa (1899, in Japanese), and (3) Suisan Hosai Shi (Records of Fishery Activities) by Noshomu-sho Suisan-kyoku (Bureau of Fisheries of Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce) (1911, in Japanese) These descriptions are summarized as follows Dolphins were searched for by telescope from one or two lookouts at vantage points on the coast Scouting vessels were also sent out because false killer whales were in small schools and hard to spot from land There were 3-4 scouting vessels carrying 6-7 persons (source 1 above) or 20 vessels with 3 persons (3)
Vernacular Names of Small Cetaceans in the Sea of Japan and East China Sea Areas That Appeared in Old Literature Old Vernacular Name
(2), the message was sent to the lookouts and then to the village Then the villagers rowed out haya-fune (quick driving boats) crewed by 2-3 with haya-uchi-ami (quick setting nets) Six to seven scouting vessels were used in the early nineteenth century (1), 40-50 vessels in the late nineteenth century (2), or 70 to over 100 (3) The difference between the three sources suggests an increase in the fishing effort during the nineteenth to early twentieth century The driving vessels and scouting vessels in cooperation drove the dolphin school to the port with the help of nets placed behind the school and sounds produced by pounding the water and the vessel sides Dolphin schools found while moving toward the harbor were easily driven, but other schools were difficult to make change their direction of swimming
After the dolphin school entered into the port, a tome-ami (securing net) was placed at the entrance to prevent escape Then, using another net yose-ami (herding net), dolphins were herded to the shallows at the beach where the fishermen could work The fishermen entered the shallow water, took a dolphin in their arms, and brought it to ashore to slaughter The dolphins were violent if hooked, but calm in the arms of naked men; the fishermen compared them to prostitutes The same comparison was made in the 1960s by drive fishermen at Kawana on the Izu coasts on the Pacific coast of central Honshu One of the sources mentioned earlier (2) stated that false killer whales were not herded to the shallows with the herding net but brought to the beach one by one
The drive fishery at Mawaki had good catches until the 1890s and then declined and ceased operation in 1896, according to source (3) mentioned earlier However, Yamada (1995, in Japanese) stated that the fishery lasted until the early 1920s, and in 1969, I interviewed a local old villager who told me that the drive fishery was carried out even after World War II and ended when a breakwater was constructed on the beach and damaged the beach for driving (Kishiro and Kasuya 1993) Admitting some uncertainty regarding the real reason for the end of the operation, it seems to be true that Mawaki village operated the dolphin drive, perhaps at a low level, for some time after World War II
Statistics are almost absent for the drive fishery along the coast of Noto Peninsula Only Takenaka (1890, in Japanese) copied catch statistics and sales records for some limited years in the late nineteenth century from records kept by the prefecture (Table 32) The Mawaki people did not process the catch but sold the whole carcasses to Ogi and Ushitsu at a price of 14-18 yen/individual for Delphinus sp, which weighed around 60 kg, and 55-77 yen/individual for false killer whales, which weighed around 225 kg The Ushitsu people flensed their catch, salted the meat, and sold it to the cities of Niigata (37°55′N, 139°02′E) and Sakata (38°55′N, 139°50′E) The head and blubber were rendered for oil Tendons were sliced, rinsed, dried, and sold to the Tamatsukuri area of Oska to be used as strings of cotton beating bows Internal organs and skeletons were sold locally or to Toyama Prefecture on the southern coast of Toyama Bay raw or dried on the beach The Ushitsu people
probably processed the carcasses purchased from Mawaki in a similar manner This is supported by the higher price of dolphin sold at Ushitsu, that is, 20-26 yen for Delphinus sp and 53-93 yen for false killer whales
Ine (35°40′N, 135°18′E) is located on the western corner of Wakasa Bay (c. 35°35′E, 135°35′N) on the southern Sea of Japan coast and comprised of the three villages Hidu, Kame-shima, and Hirata Kame-shima traditionally authorized taking of whales found in Ine Cove by closing the entrance and then harpooning them The catch records from 1655 to 1913 have been reprinted in a slightly edited form in the second volume of Ine Choshi (History of Ine Town) by Ine Choshi Hensan Iinkai (Editorial Committee of the History of Ine Town) (1985, in Japanese), but the value of the source is diminished by the uncertainty in the process of converting old species names into modern names The original catch records for whales were analyzed by Yoshihara (1976, in Japanese)
The village of Hirata had the rights to take dolphins in Ine Cove Kyoto-fu Gyogyo Shi (Fisheries of Kyoto) (Kyoto-fu Suisan Koshujo [Kyoto Fishery Training Center] 1909, in Japanese) described the fishery and the gear The fishing season was from March to April As soon as a dolphin school was sighted in the Cove, the people of Hirata surrounded it with rowed boats, drove it in an inlet in front of Hirata, closed the entrance with a net, and slaughtered the dolphins Records of catches exist for 1732-1901 (Wakuta 1989, in Japanese) This valuable resource for studying the cetacean fauna and historical change has not been analyzed by scientists
Tsushima Island (c. 34°05′N-34°40′N, 129°13′E-129°30′E) stretches about 70 × 15 km and appears to consist of two islands because of an artificially created canal It is located in the middle of Tsushima Strait, which connects the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan Many villages there have a long history of dolphin drives Oyama and Shibahara (1987, in Japanese) recorded the history of the dolphin drive fishery, which they believed was going to be lost from the memory of the islanders The oldest record on the dolphin fishery dates from 1404 This was a letter from a local governor to the head of O-ura on Asaji Cove (c. 34°20′N, 129°15′E) encouraging dolphin hunting as a taxable activity The feudal lord of the islands in 1641 recorded the appointment of a magistrate in charge of the dolphin fishery and taxation of the dolphin fishery at Ina (34°34′N, 129°19′E) on the northwestern coast of Tsushima Island There is also a seventeenth century record of a move of a village to the beach at O-ura that was considered to be better for the dolphin fishery These records suggest two facts: (1) the villagers of Tsushima cooperated in hunting dolphins found in the inlet since the fifteenth century, and (2) the dolphin fishery was important for the economy of the country, which was mountainous and had little farm land Although firm evidence of net use in the dolphin fishery was available only from 1846, in view of the earlier records of the nearby Goto Islands (see Section 35), a net must have been used earlier
In Tsushima Island, the dolphin drive was operated cooperatively by several closely associated villages and had rules on obligations of the villagers and the shares to be received from the catch Five such written agreements have survived to the present They are dated between 1895 and 1923 and provide evidence of a minimum of five dolphin drive groups in Tsushima Three of the five groups were at Asaji Cove, which opens on the East China Sea, and the remaining two were on the Oroshika (34°24′N, 129°23′E) and Miura (34°30′N, 129°25′E) inlets, which open on the Sea of Japan If we add to these five locations another three groups at Ina, Nita (34°33′N, 129°21′E), and Shushi (34°36′N, 129°28′E) that were orally recorded as having dolphin drives, there were a total of eight drive groups in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century in Tsushima Island Each of these groups was formed by 3-7 villages; a total of about 20 villages participated in the dolphin drives (Oyama and Shibahara 1987, in Japanese)
Suisan-cho Chosa-kenkyu-bu (Investigation and Research Department of the Fisheries Agency) (1968, 1969, in Japanese) made a survey on dolphin hunting along the northern, western, and southern coasts of Kyushu using a questionnaire Its main objective was to collect information on recent operations to be used in finding a way to resolve the dolphin-fishery conflict at Iki Island (c. 33°47′N, 129°43′E) in Tsushima Strait The objective was different from that of the previously cited study by Oyama and Shibahara (1987, in Japanese) The survey also identified eight groups or fishery cooperative unions (FCUs) that had been involved in dolphin drives in recent years Three of the eight were located in Asaji Cove, which opens
FCU in Mitu-shima Town and Kara-saki FCU in Toyotama Village), two of them (Sasuna FCU at 34°38′N, 129°23′E, and Ina FCU) were facing to the East China Sea, and the remaining three (Toyotama-mura-higashi and Hinode FCUs of Toyotama Village at 34°24′N, 129°23′E, and Kamoise FCU of Mitsu-shima Town at 34°16′N, 129°20′E) were on the Sea of Japan side of the islands Of the eight FCUs, only the Ina FCU recorded a drive of 23-30 dolphins in 1950 Since the 1920s, the system of FCUs has changed, and some small villages could have merged into larger ones, so strict comparison of the two sets of driving teams is difficult However, I could identify some common names between the two lists and some identical geographical locations, and I suspect that the two sets of eight drive groups in the two lists are probably identical
Oyama and Shibahara (1987, in Japanese) described the dolphin drive The driving started with news of sighting of dolphin school by someone in the cove, who got a reward for the sighting Receiving the news, all the villagers rushed to their boats and steered them to the school with a kazura on board The kazura was a traditional tool used to scare fish and dolphins in the drive fishery, a rope with about 1 m long wood pieces hanging from it at about 2 m intervals and a weight on one end It was hung vertically in the water from the boat while driving the target animals They also hit the side of the boat to scare the dolphins with the sound When the dolphin school entered a suitable area, they closed the inlet with an ohiki-ami (large stretched net), whose procedure was called harikiri (shut down)
After closing the inlet, there was a ceremony of the “first lance” by one or two women dressed as hazashi (harpooners) who lanced the first animal The killing tool “lance” was not a hand harpoon with a detachable head as used by the Japanese hand-harpoon fishery (Chapter 2) but had an asymmetrical iron head with barbs The iron head was fixed to a wooden shaft After this ceremony, the participants either killed the animals in the water with lances and then pulled them up onto the beach or pulled up several dolphins at a time with a net and killed them on the beach Miyamoto (2001, in Japanese) reported that the ceremony of “first harpoon” was also performed on the occasion of driving tunas As far as is known to me, the ceremony was a unique feature of the drive fishery in Tsushima Another interesting point is the use of a lance to kill the dolphins, which was quite different from the killing method used in the Noto fishery in modern times (see Section 31) and from the hand-harpoon fishery in northeastern Japan that used a hand harpoon with detachable head The Tsushima method might represent an old method of hunting in the islands but more probably was introduced from old-type Japanese whaling that once operated in the islands The latter idea comes from two facts, that is, the shape of the lance that is similar to that of the haya-mori (quick lance) used in Japanese net whaling (see Section 22) and the use of the old whaling term hazashi.
