ABSTRACT
Introduction With annual catches of about 12 million tonnes, Japan is the leading fishing nation in the world. More than 400,000 people are directly engaged in fishing and many others receive their income from processing and marketing fish products. Few people in the world can match the Japanese who, on the average, consume between 65 and 70 kilograms of fish a year. For these reasons alone Japan’s fisheries deserve attention from social scientists. But there are more urgent reasons to study Japan’s fisheries. Foremost of these is the Japanese management structure which until recently has received scant notice abroad, despite the fact that Japanese scholars have written extensively on the subject (for example, Habara 1954; Arai 1970; Hara 1977; Ninohei 1978).
