Change of Fisherman's Community and Inshore Fishing Ground as a Community Tie (I)

Abstract

Fishing villages of Japan had their own inshore fishing groud and fishermen of one or more villages shared fishery from these common fishing ground. When shared by more than one village, strict regulations were established to control the use of the area. Trouble resulted when one village insisted their rights were paramount to that of another village. It is the purpose of this paper to trace the changing character of the common fishing ground as a community tie of fishing village since the Meiji Restoration, 1868.Ajiro, a fishing village and port of the east coast of Izu, owned Ajiro Bay as its common fishing ground before the Restoration, but the ownership was canceled by the Meiji government while several new fishing rights were admitted in the same area. Those fishing rights were opened to tenderers of fishing enterprise. Owing to the political registration of the early Meiji the character of common fishing ground as a community tie began to change gradually. Village people wanted to maintain their owner-ship against the new stage; they retained one of fishing rights, the set-net right which was economically the most valuable, under the village ownership, and they registrated to distribute equally its fishing interest to each door, 1916.On the other hand the modernization of the village by the Meiji government was embodied in the Law of 1889. The Japanese village, since the reshuffling of 1889, was both community and an administrative unit with modern selfgoverning rights, as contrasted with the feudal villge. Under the feudal village system village, pleple were forbidden to change their occupation or to move out of their village. Since the Restoration, however, feudal registrations were abolished. There fore, a village could not consist of old village households only and a new village should be one new community including some new inhabitants. The registration to distribute fishery interest was an expression of conservatism by old village people to preserve the traditional community against a modern village.However, owing to the development of village management under the new village system, the growth of various kinds of fishery and occupation except fishery within Ajiro village, the distribution of interest was substancially abolished, 1928. After all the set-net fishery right owned by the village itself was transfered to the Ajiro fisherman's association, 1936. And the common fishing ground almost entirely changed its character as a community tie.