Institutional Changes and Development of the Fishing Industry in a Japanese Island Community

Abstract

The main focus of this study is placed on an analytical assessment of technological and institutional changes centering around the development of local fishing industry in the 1960's at Katsumoto-ura community, Iki Island, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. The technological change involved wide acceptance of innovative elements which have direct bearing upor modernization of fishing technique for local fishermer and fishing operations of the community as a whole. The impact of technological change has ultimate affected the marine ecology of this island. The institutional change, on the other hand, is concerned with development of a local fishing cooperative and its wider socio-economic implications, which resulted in an expansion of multi-functional activities affecting not only the technological sphere but other facets of local fishing industry as well. Contrary to much cited and readily observable technological change, which often leads to a notion of monistic technological determinism, this study is oriented to reveal changing roles of institutions, rather than changing technology, as a prime force behind modernization of local commercia fishing and as a more effective means of adaptive strategy than the latter. As findings from this study indicate, socio-economic consequences of modernization, besides playing a key role in reshaping the local fishing operations and the economy, have led to greater involvement of the local population in all spheres of socio-economic affairs. Effective readjustment to local social conditions and the fishing industry was accomplished by the cooperative. By imposing institutional changes on the local scene, the fishing cooperative has adjusted to changing economic conditions with less difficulty than individua kin groups, even though the basic fishing operatior clings to the traditional mode of the household unit.