Eastern Asia at the Fisheries Exhibition

Abstract

THE sections of the Fisheries Exhibition devoted to China, Japan, and the British settlements and protected native states in the Malay Peninsula, are in some respects disappointing. The interest and beauty of the Chinese section are indeed unsurpassed; but the other sections fall far below what might have been anticipated. At the Fisheries Exhibition in Berlin three years ago, Japan was excellently represented; and when we recollect that fish forms one of the principal—probably next to rice and millet, the principal—staples of Japanese food, that the fishing-grounds extend from the most northern Kuriles almost within the Arctic circle, through various zones down to the most southern islands of the Loochoo archipelago, where they approach the sub-tropical regions, and that the primitive methods of catching and preserving fish of more than one race are now daily practised in various parts of this chain of islands, known as the Japanese Empire, it will be seen what scope the Japanese authorities had to make their section of much practical and scientific interest. At Berlin their section did possess such interest, and the collection formed for exhibition there has, we believe, been made the nucleus for a domestic and permanent Fisheries Exhibition in Tokio. Failing the time or funds necessary to make a representative collection for London this year, it was open to the Japanese Government to take a single portion of their vast fishing-grounds-such as Yezo, or the Inland Sea, or the Loochoo Archipelago-and represent that only. This has been done by China with marked success. As it is, Japan is represented in the small space allotted to her by specimens of the fish tinned at the Government canning establishments at Sapporo in Yezo, and by a stall full of pictures on silk, lacquer, &c., of fish and fishing. These latter are all marked, “for sale at the close of the Exhibition.” Doubtless the Japanese authorities had good reasons of their own for thus limiting their participation in the present Exhibition; still it is permissible to express regret that they did not add, as they undoubtedly could have done, more to its value and interest.