Part I: Open-boat Whaling
Early Whaling in China and Korea
In the summer of 1971 a severe drought revealed a twenty-six-foot long sandstone wall across a small stream at the head of the Taehwa River, in Ulchu County, South Korea, that had been hidden from view since the area was submerged after the construction of a damn further down stream. What archeologists found were Neolithic rock carvings of terrestrial and marine life, including 46 of which depicted cetaceans. Among them were Balaenidae (right whales) and Balaenopteridae (rorquals, which include whales such as the blue, fin, and humpback), some of which are distinctly being harpooned by several men in boats, while others show what may be the areas where the whales were flensed. The Korean archeologist Kim Won-Yong has suggested that these drawings may be from as early as 6,000 B.C., which would make them some of the earliest known illustrations of whaling (Ellis 1991).
In his 1673 report submitted to the East India Company describing "The Cities, Towns, Villages, Ports, Rivers, &., In Their Passages from Canton to Peking," John Nieuhoff included a description of whaling near Hainan, on the southernmost coast of China. His description of the whales taken suggests North Pacific right whales, Eubalaena japonica. As noted by Ellis (1991), he unfortunately concludes his report with, "The manner of killing them has been sufficiently described by others, and therefore I shall forebear to trouble the Reader with a Relation thereof."
Although the documentation of whaling in China in the Western literature is scarce, there is in the September 1844 edition of The Friend, an article published that details whaling near and around Hainan. Ellis (1991) included it in its entirety in his Men & Whales, as I will do here:
During the months of January and February, whales and their young resort to the coast of China, to the south of Hailing Shan, in great numbers; and during those months are pursued by the Chinese belonging to Hainan and the neighboring islands with considerable success. The fish generally seem to be in bad condition, and were covered with barnacles and their object in resorting to that part of the coast during that season, is probably to obtain food for themselves and young, from the great quantity of squid, cuttle, and blubber fish which abound, and perhaps also to roll on the numerous sand banks on the coast, in order to clear their skin of barnacles and other animals which torment them. They are often seen leaping more than their whole length out of the water, and coming down perpendicularly so as to strike hard against the bottom.
It is an exciting scene to see these boats out, in fleets of from 50 to 70, scattered over the bays as far as the eye can reach, under full sail, cruising about in search of their prey. Some steer straight ahead, with the crew facing in different directions, observing the boats in their company, and leaving no chance of a spout escaping unnoticed. Upon others, the harpooner may be seen leaning over the bow ready to strike, and occasionally waving his right or left hand to direct the helmsman after the fish in its various turnings- the strictest silence the while being observed.
The boats are admirably adapted for following up the fish, as they sail well, make little noise in going through the water, and may be turned around in half the time and space that a foreign boat occupies. They are of different sizes; the smallest are about three tons and the largest about twenty-five, carrying two small boats on her deck, and a crew of twelve men, of light draft of water and of good length. On the bow is a crooked piece of timber, supported by a stanchion [sic], which serves as a rest for the harpoon when not wanted; it enables the harpooner to stretch well out over the bow, and see their fish as they pass below the boat. In this position they are struck, for the weight of the harpoon prevents its being thrown any distance. Abaft the mainmast the deck is rounded so as to form the roof of the cabin; on its top the whale line is coiled.
The harpoon has only one barb, and about fifteen inches from the point of the iron it is made with a socket; above which, an eye is wrought, with a cord attached to the iron, to which the whale line is fastened and stopped slack along the wooden shaft so that when the fish is struck, the iron and the line tightens, the shaft draws out, and leaves less chance of the iron cutting out or loosing its hold on the skin of the fish.
The whale line is made of native hemp, and is about 60 or 70 fathoms [360 or 420 feet] long, and from 4 to 6 inches in circumference, according to the size of the boat. Great length of line is not required by them, for there is shoal water along the coast for many miles to seaward. One end of the line is fastened round the mainmast, the remainder is coiled away on the top of the house, and carried forward to the harpoon in the bow, where it is made fast, leaving a few fathoms of slack line.
The boats come out of the different harbors at daylight, and spread themselves soon along the coast. As soon as the fish is seen blowing, away they go in chase. If fortunate enough to get fast, the sails are lowered, the bight of the line got aft, the rudder unshipped, and the boat allowed to tow stern foremost. The rest of the fleet seeing the sail lowered, come up to assist; and as the fish now keeps pretty much to the surface in its struggle to get away, they soon manage to fasten eight or ten harpoons into it, and in a couple of hours or so it is dead from wounds and loss of blood. They always strike the fish a little behind the blowhole, on the top of the back. When the fish is dead, it is lashed alongside one or two of the boats to float it, and to allow the others to make their lines fast to the tail and tow it on shore. It is surprising that the boats are not stove in, or completely destroyed from their manner of taking the fish, i.e. sailing right over it and then striking it; but from the cool way in which the Chinese manage the whole affair, I have no doubt that personal accidents occur more seldom than with our fishermen. Their greatest danger is when two or three whales are struck together in the same place, and swim round and over each other, so as to foul the lines. The boats are then drawn against each other and over the fish, and run great risk of being soon swamped and stove in pieces. In one instance of this sort that fell under my observation, they had three of their boats swamped, but managed to clear the lines, and kill the fish in a most dexterous manner; after which some of the spare boats returned and towed the damaged boats to shore. They had no lances in their boats, nor in fact any other weapon except the harpoons, which they refused to sell at any price. All the boats had parts of the whale’s flesh salted, which they used as provisions. They refused to give any account of what use they made of the fish, and in general, were not disposed to be very civil to strangers, which might arise from jealousy, or a fear of our interfering with their fishery. The fish are, I believe, what whalers call the right whale, and were calculated by those on board to yield on an average of 50 barrels of oil each.
Basque Whaling
I've replaced my original section on Basque whaling with a more accurate and comprehensive verison on my
blog.
Belgian Whaling
It is said that there was a prosperous whale fishery prosecuted from the coast of Flanders between the 9th and 13th century. According to a book entitled the Translation and Miracles of St. Vaast, whaling was practiced on the coast of Flanders in 875. In the 11th century work the Life of St. Arnould, bishop of Soissons, it is claimed that, in promising part of a large whale they were trying to kill to their Saint, Flemish fishermen were able to subdue the whale and bring it ashore. Their principal target was probably the North Atlantic right whale, but the Belgian historian W. M. A De Smet suggests that they may have also preyed on gray whales.
In 1447, archives hold that four whaling ships had their homeport in Blankenberge, a fishing harbour a little over two miles from Wenduine and halfway between Ostend and Knokke, in modern day Belgium. In 1664 eight entrepreneurs from Bruges decided on fitting out one or two flutes for the Greenland fishery. They formed the Groenlandtsche Compaigne, and in the following year they sent out two vessels, which were able to catch six small whales with the experienced Dutch captains and harpooners they were able to obtain with the efforts of the Rotterdam merchant Coster. The best catches were in 1669, when their two ships obtained a cargo of 13 and 11 whales. Although the company ceased sending out whalers in 1675, the next year four more whaleships left from the port of Ostend and requested to be escorted by the Ostend convoy fleet as far as Dogger Bank to avoid French privateers.
Inspired by the success of the Ostend East India Company, Baron Adam-Joseph de Sotelet, a high ranking civil servant and a member of the lower gentry, asked the government in Vienna for a charter to establish a whaling company in 1727. Sotelet created a joint stock company, attracting several wealthy people from his own circle, high ranking civil servants and noblemen, to invest sums in his enterprise. Jan-Baptist Jozef de Fravula, like Sotelet, a high ranking civil servant, was named Chairmen of the company.
The Board of Directors, consisting of eight major financiers, knew nothing about whaling, and only joined the venture because of the prospect of receiving high dividends. Hendrik Van Meygelen, a local merchant from Brussels and one of the board of directors, was appointed as the administrative book keeper; Jan de Schonamille was engaged by the Directors as the Company agent in Ostend to organize the maritime side of the expeditions and the public auctions of the oil and whalebone; and several months before the Austrian government granted Sotelet’s charter, the Amsterdam merchant Arnold Joseph Du Bois was contracted to look for suitable whaling vessels (Parmentier 1997).
Due to limited capital, Du Bois was advised by Sotelet to buy secondhand vessels, and on 30 November 1726 the Dutch agent was able to procure the three flutes Maria Catharina (435 tons), Jonge Hildegonda (445 tons), and Nieuwe Hoop (358 tons) from the Westzaamdam shipwright Cornelis Dirksz Ouwejan for 29,750 guilders. In December the fourth ship, the frigate St. Joseph (374 tons) was purchased from the Amsterdam merchant Adrian Wittert for 8,600 guilders, and in February 1727 Du Bois purchased the last of the Ostend fleet, the flute Perel (435 tons), for 8,500 guilders.
Four of the five Dutch ships arrived in the port of Ostend in the beginning of March, while the frigate St. Joseph left for San Sebastián to recruit a Basque crew. Besides the St. Joseph, all the vessels of the first expedition shipped Dutch, Dunkirk, and Ostend mariners. The first three ships were renamed the Walvis, Faem van Vlaenderen, and Vergulde Arent, while the other flute and the frigate kept their names.
The first campaign was a disaster. The Walvis was lost in a blizzard on 17 June- probably being punctured after hitting several ice floes- and the other three flutes weren’t able to capture any whales while cruising off the west coast of Spitsbergen. In the last days of July they decided to cruise northwards once more, three times seeing the blows of whales, but being uncertain as to whether they were bowhead or fin whales, Balaenoptera physalus. On 5 August three shallops even tried to capture a kasielot (cachalot or sperm whale), but it proved to be too fast for them. They left Spitsbergen on 14 August, leaving with a large amount of stones as ballast as they had no whale oil to store in their holds.
In 1728 they fitted out four ships, two from Ostend and two from San Sebastián. They renamed the flute Faem van Vlaenderen the Onze-Lieve-Vrouw ter Bijstand and gave her a crew that consisted solely of Basque sailors, even hiring a Basque captain, Joseph de la Varta of San Sebastián, to command her. The other three vessels kept their same captains, but the makeup of their harpooners and flensers shifted to Flemish and Dunkirk mariners. This season they fished in the Davis Strait, principally around Disco Bay. In August three of the four whaleships arrived to report that the two Basque vessels were able to capture four whales, among them cachalots (Parmentier 1997).
For the third expedition (1729) they fitted out all four of their ships in the Basque country, as well as engaging three new commanders and renaming two of the fleet. The St. Peter (ex-Perel) was now commanded by Benito De Arona, the St. Michel (ex-Vergulde Arent) was given to Antonio Sagarna, and Bartholomeo De Gorostiago was given command of the St. Joseph, while De la Varta remained the master of the Onze-Lieve-Vrouw ter Bijstand. They again cruised in the Davis Strait, returning to Ostend in September with five "poissons de grande baye vivant, et un mort outre deux plus petits." As was the case for the previous two expeditions, the proceeds made during the third expedition weren’t enough to cover costs. The results, however, were good enough to encourage the company to fit out whalers again from San Sebastián, but, probably because of being pressured by the English and Dutch, in February 1730 the Spanish forbade the Ostenders to make further use of the Basque facilities (Parmentier 1997). It was decided at a general meeting held in Antwerp on 25 February 1730 that the company would try to sell their four ships as soon as possible. The company was finally liquidated in May 1734.
It wasn’t until 1771 until another whaler set sail from Flanders again. An attempt was made by the Bruges merchant Nicolas Donche to revive the trade. His frigate Maria en Alida was able to capture 2½ whales on her second cruise near Greenland, but when Donche’s third venture proved to be a failure, he decided he no longer wanted to risk capital on the trade.
It was during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1781-1783), when the neutrality of the Austrian Netherlands made whaling possible for a few years, that the last attempt at the trade was made in Ostend. Once peace had returned to Europe, the Flemish participation in the whaling trade ended (Parmentier 1997).
Spanish Whaling
Little mention is made of purely Spanish ventures in the whaling trade in the English literature. Only occasionally did the Spanish send out whaling expeditions from the 15th to the middle of the 18th century (Aguilar 1986). At least one of the whaleships under the Spanish flag may have sailed from a port outside the Basque region to Iceland in the 17th century, but it isn’t entirely clear as to whether Icelandic annuals were speaking of purely Spanish ventures or Spanish Basques ones. In all likelihood they were probably mostly (if not entirely) from San Sebastián and other Spanish Basque ports.
In the second quarter of the 18th century the Spanish tried to revive their whaling trade, but not from the ports outside the Basque region. In 1728, the Real Compania Mercantil de Ballenas was formed in San Sebastián, but failed to fit out any ships. With the support of the Spanish Crown, a new joint stock company was created in 1732, operating with marginal success between 1733 and 1737 (Parmentier 1997).
They tried once more in the last quarter of the 18th century. Several attempts were made from 1778 to 1799 to establish a whaling industry in the Canary Islands, but despite a high economic outlay the effort was unsuccessful, as only a few whales were taken. According to Aguilar (1986), they were likely fin or sperm whales. The catching of the former species seems doubtful, so it was most likely the latter. A company, the Real Compañía Marítima, was given a charter by Charles IV in 1789 to fish for whales off the coast of Patagonia, in the Straits of Magellan, and around Chiloé Island (Jenkins 1921). It sent out its first ships at the end of the same year. From that time until 1797, when the last expedition returned, several vessels of this company hunted sea lions and whales (probably southern right whales) in South American waters, with the main area of operations being the mouth of La Plata River. "Despite high investment and official support," Aguilar says, "the expeditions finally became too expensive, whales too difficult to pursue and whaling had to cease."
Two vessels recorded as whaleships sailed from the port of Cadaqués, in the province of Girona (on the Mediterearan coast of Spain), in 1843 and 1868, but were of too small tonnage to carry tryworks and thus be able to carry out pelagic sperm whaling, so it has been suggested that they may have prosecuted the shore fishery for humpbacks, Megaptera novaeangliae, that was developing around the Cape Verde Islands
1 during the mid-19th century (Reeves 2002; cited in Aguilar & Borrell 2007).
1 As early as the 16th century whale products were being exported from the islands to Brazil. Whaling from the islands continued into the early 20th century. See the Portuguese section for more information about whaling from the Cape Verde Islands (below).
Harpoon and Net Whaling in Japan
The first records of whaling by the use of harpoons are from the 1570s at Morosaki at the entrance of Mikawa Bay, a bay attached to Ise Bay that opens to the Pacific (Kasuya 2002). At first, light harpoons were used with a detachable head and line, but harpoons with a fixed head and the use of lancing followed. They took gray and humpback whales during the winter, continuing these whaling operations until the early 19th century. Several boats were used when attacking whales with harpoons, a technique known as the harpoon method (tsukitori-ho) (Kalland 1995). Once captured, the whales were towed to the shore, where they were flensed for their meat and oil.
"Harpoon whaling" soon spread eastward to Katsuyama (35° N) at the entrance of Tokyo Bay for the exploitation of Baird’s beaked whales, Berardius bairdii, and continued on into the late 19th century. It also spread westward to the nearby Ise and Kii areas (before 1606), Shikoku (1624), northern Kyushu (1630s), and Nagato (around 1672). Harpoon whaling on the Ise and Kii coasts mostly ceased before 1770, but a group of whalers at Taiji, Kii, was an exception (Kasuya 2002).
Whaling at Taiji was said to have been inaugurated in 1606 by the lord of the manor at Mizuno, Yorimoto Wada, who organzied the boatmen and harpooners into five whaling crews. His grandson, Yorharu Wada (who changed his name to Kakuemon Taiji), is claimed to be the one responsible for the invention of net whaling sometime between 1675 and 1677 (Kalland 1995, Ellis 1991). This method of whaling, known as the net method (amitori-ho), was soon transmitted to Shikoku (1681) and northern Kyushu (1684). Towards the end of the 17th century another method of net whaling, were whales were pursued into narrow bays whereupon nets were set across the entrance to block their escape, was developed in Kayoi (in Nagato). Even though it wasn’t as efficient as Taiji’s method, by the 1670s it had spread to several villages on the Nagato coast.
Taiji’s method is described by Yamada Yosei in his Whaling in Words and Pictures (1829) at the island of Ikitsuki, one of the islands laying off Hirato Island, on the northwestern coast of Kyushu (southwestern Japan). On the southeastern side of the island there are several villages that have save anchorages, Tachi-ura, Ichibu-ura, and Misaki-ura among them. A rich man named Masutomi Matazaemon lived at Ichibu-ura, and his business was whaling. He sent whaling parties to five fishing grounds, namely Maeme and Katsumoto in Iki Island, each of which he sent two parties in winter and one in spring; Misaki-ura on Ikitsuki Island, where he sent one party in winter and one in spring; Ero-shima, near Nagasaki, where he sent one party in spring from Maeme; and Itabe in Goto territory, where he sent one party in spring from Katsumoto (Yosei 1829). Those parties sent during the winter season were to hunt the whales traveling from north to south between the beginning of January and the middle of March, while those operating during the spring were to catch whales coming up from the south to the north between the middle of March and the end of August.
Lookouts were either kept on the mountains or watchtowers were built on high places to scan the sea for passing whales. Watchboats were also sent six or seven miles out to look for the spouting of whales. In choosing a site for a factory, or whaling station, a place where the whales could be easily stranded on the beach in front of the factory was chosen. The factory was surrounded by a stout stone wall with a gate on each side.
The whaling station consisted of a house for the net, one for the smith and cooper, others for meat and tail flukes, two houses for dried tendons, a house for rope, one for salt, a large house, a house for oil jars, a small house, houses for bone, for accounting, for carpenters, for tools, for rice, for fresh tendons, for skulls, a small warehouse for an oil tank, one about 36-feet long for another oil tank, a warehouse about 48-feet long for the boilers, a house for the whale catchers (Hazashi), 30 houses for the hunters (Kako), and eight capstans to haul in the whales (Yosei 1829).
Each year Matazaemon sent a party to his factory at Misaki-ura during the ten days between the beginning and middle of Janaury. As the party was to spend 150 days at Misaki-ura they held a farewell feast with their families before departing. A typical whaling party was made up of two commanders, three officers, 50 sailors, three clerks, 18 whale slaughterers, 12 tendon scrapers, two rice men, two boys, eight managers, one bone oil man, seven watchmen, three carpenters, one smith, one cooper, one man in charge of the nets, 30 whale catchers, and 440 hunters, for a total of 587 persons. They went to sea in 40 boats; 20 hunters’ boats, four carrying boats, six net boats, six tow boats for the net boats, one manager’s boat, and two boats and one jolly-boat belonging to the whaling station (Yosei 1829). They were all painted in patterns of crimson, white, and black. The whaling group at Oshima, however, who posted look-outs in Oshima and Jinoshima, only operated four net boats, two rowing boats and 15-20 hunters’ boats (Kalland 1995).
The hunters’ boats carried a single whale catcher, 13 hunters, and occasionally an assistant catcher. They measured 42 feet in length and were seven feet wide. The carrying boats were manned by a catcher and 12 hunters, and also measured some 42 feet in length, but were a little wider then the hunters’ boats at seven and a quarter feet wide. Each net boat was 40 feet long and 12 feet wide. They carried a crew of ten. These six net boats carried the three sets of 38 nets, each having a length of 28 fathoms (168 feet) and becoming 18 fathoms (108 feet) square when spread out (Yosei 1829). A temporary lashing connected each net. Each net boat was loaded with 19 nets lashed to each other, making a pair of net boats responsible for a single set of nets. The last boats, the tow boats, were identical to the hunters’ boats.
They mainly caught four species of whale, the North Pacific right (Semi-Kujira, the beautiful-backed whale), the humpback (Zato-Kujira)
1, the fin (Nagasu-Kujira), and the gray whale (Ko-Kujira, or Koku-Kujira, the devil fish). They also caught the occasional blue (Shiro Nagasu-Kujira), sperm (Makko-Kujira), or sei/Bryde’s whale (Iwashi-Kujira), but the oil yield and quality of the latter’s meat was low, so it was seldomly caught –at least at the fishery described by Yosei, for, as the catches below show, they were often caught in other areas.
At Kawajiri, Nagato they caught 893 humpback (average of 6.1 annually), 257 right (1.7), 169 gray (1.1), and 156 fin whales (1.0), for a total of 1,415 whales (9.7) being caught between 1698 and 1889. For the fishery at Tsuro, Shikoku, they caught 343 humpback (7.1), 42 right (0.8), 201 gray (4.1), 47 blue (0.9), 14 fin (0.2), and 107 Bryde’s whales (2.2), for a total of 754 whales (15.7) being caught between 1849 and 1896.
Once a whale was spotted by a lookout on a mountain or watchtower, a signal mat was hoisted at the top of a nearby pole or a smoke signal was given. If it was a right whale a smoke signal was made at two places, and if any other species, at just one. At this juncture the hunters’ boats, net boats, carrying boats, and watchboats pulled off from the beach in pursuit, no matter the conditions of the wind or waves (Yosei 1829).
"For a Right whale the flags are hoisted at the bow," explains Yosei (1829), "and if the whale is accompanied by a calf the pole with the reed mat is set up at the stern. For a Humpback the flags are hoisted at the stern, and if the whale is accompanied by a calf the pole with the reed mat is set up at the bow. For a Fin whale the subsidiary flag is hoisted at the stern, and if the whale is accompanied by a calf the white flag is hoisted underneath. In the case of the Gray whale the flags are hoisted on the inclined pole at the bow, but there is no signal if the whale is accompanied by a calf."
Once the boats had caught up with the whale, the hunters’ boat would drive the whale towards the net boats by beating the bow of their boats with a round rod about two feet long and yelling their hunting call. When the signal is given (that is, when the boatswain in the lead hunters’ boat made a cross with two waifs in each hand) the net boats are joined stern to stern. They did this by joining the set of nets together with a fine rope. The boats would then row in opposite directions and cast the net. The other two pairs of net boats would follow, effectively creating three pairs of nets: the middle net (Mito, or door set) set in the front and the left and right nets cast behind the middle net. Smaller whaling operations, such as the groups in Fukuoka, on Kyushu, employed only two nets.
After the whale had blundered into the nets the catcher immediately harpooned the whale as it first came to surface with his large harpoon
3 (Yorozu mori). This first harpoon was called Ichiban Mori. Right, humpback, fin, and blue whales were caught in this way, but as the gray whale did not fear the hunters’ shouts and seldomly went into the nets (and if it did, it savagely destroyed them and escaped), only the harpoon method could be used to catch this species. If the whale was accompanied by a calf, the calf would be harpooned first so as to keep the mother near.
After the first and second large harpoons were made fast, flags were hoisted at the stern, signaling the others to harpoon the whale in turn. Thus weakened, the lancing
4- Ken Kiri- began. After the lancing, when the whale was thought to be "half-dead," a catcher holding a knife jumped atop the whale, cut a hole through the septum of the whale’s blowhole, and signaled that he had finished his duty by raising his knife over his head. With this, another catcher with a rope dived into the water, got himself atop the whale, tied the rope around the hole made by the first catcher, and returned to the boat to make the end of the rope fast.
When it had been determined that the whale was near death, the boatswain with the waif signaled the carrying boats to begin lashing the whale. Many of the catchers, who were skilful swimmers, then jumped into the water and swam under the whale with ropes (Do nawa), coming up in two places to encircle the whale at the chest and belly to place the whale between two carrying boats. The securing spare was then put across both carrying boats, creating a sort of raft. After this many of the catchers tried to stab at the whale with their lances and large knives. With these last thrusts of the lances and knifes the whale performs its death flurry, and at that moment all the whalers chant three times "May its soul rest in peace!" and pray to god and Buddha to express their thanks for the capture of a whale.
Once the whale had expired two towing ropes were secured to the posts of each of the two carrying boats and the whale was towed to Misaki-ura by more than 10 boats in two ranks (Yosei 1829). Arriving at the factory, the jolly-boat was sent out once they were about a quarter of a mile from the shore, and took the whale down to the beach, where it was winched ashore to be flensed. Five or six flensers began cutting up the whale with their large flensing knives to the commands of the foreman flenser. The bones, blubber, meat, and intestines could all be made into food. They also produced oil from boiling the blubber, which they used for the making of soap and in the use of lamps. The oil could also be mixed with vinegar to be made into a pesticide for rice paddies. The bone was crushed, boiled and made into a "bone sediment" that was used as a fertilizer for fields and gardens, as well as being utilized as manure for tobacco plants. The baleen was used for the ribs of folding fans, lantern handles, fishing rods, plates, and the strings of puppets (Ellis 1991).
According to Kalland (1995), Japanese whaling faced three main issues: (i) Incompetant operators who may have only wished for quick gains, (ii) fluctating catches, and (iii) declining catches due to the inroads made by American and European whalers in the mid- to late-19th century on stocks of right whales that migrated through the Inland Sea and the Pacific coast of Japan to the Sea of Okhotsk and the Kuril Islands.
For example, in the case of the first problem, due to the poor leadership from the start of his operations at Jinoshima in 1841, Hirokawa Ribei had to give up after only one season when he caught only two adult right whales and two juvuniles (Kalland 1995). Another group organized in 1725 by Kumamotoya Sukejiro at Oronoshima also suspended operations after only a single season. The region had a history of doing this, as the first group organized at Oronoshima in 1680 by Fukuzawa Gidayu had to suspend operations after just six years.
The second problem was more of a issue for smaller groups than for the larger, well-organized ones that could cope with a few bad years. For example, Matsuya Chouemon’s group at Oshima experianced good catches in 1767 and 1768 (in the latter year taking 22 whales), but after making poor catches in 1769 Chouemon’s group was forced to sell all its equipment the following year, but only recovered 60% of his original investment in doing so (Takata 1976; cited in Kalland 1995). Between 1753 and 1757 the Arikawa group, operating on the Goto islands (the western most archipelago in Japan), averaged 73 whales annualy, but between 1815 and 1817 they only averaged three. Matazaemon’s groups tended to be more stable than these examples. At his whaling stations in Misaki-ura, Katsumoto, and Maeme between 1764 and 1777 his groups caught between 21 and 44, 35 and 47, and 38 and 65 whales annually. Compare this to the villages in Taiji, Koyoi, Kochi and Wakayama, where each village was said to average about 90 to 100 whales per year.
The third problem was probably the most devastating. Beginning in 1820 American and British, and later other European whalers, visited the offshore waters of Japan to hunt cachalots or sperm whales. Later, with the discovery of right whales around the Kuril Islands by Mercator Cooper
5 in the 440-ton Sag Harbour whaler Manhatton in 1845, began the decline of right whale populations off of the Japanese coast. According to Townsend’s charts, many of the right whales taken by American whalers were caught in the Inland Sea, north of Hokkaido between southern Sakhalin and the Kuriles, off both coasts of the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Sea of Okhotsk and south of the Bering Sea, as well as off the coast of southern China. With these inroads on the right whale stocks, some groups adopted the modern (Norwegian) method of whaling, whereas others attempted to improve their traditional methods (Kasuya 2002). A few whalers using the net method moved to new grounds in Hokkaido and southern Sakhalin, where they hunted gray whales.
While attempting to bring a whale ashore during a storm in 1878, 111 men and almost the entire Taiji whaling fleet were lost. Despite this, net whaling continued in southwestern Honshu until at least 1909, in a time when modern whaling had already established itself as the leading method of capturing whales along the shores of Japan.
1 "In western Japan a blind man who carries a lute on his back and, going from house to house plays to the ’God of the Oven,’ reciting Jijin-kyo, is called Zato. The name of Zato-Kujira, they say, is because of the resemblance of the back fin of the whale to the lute on the blind man’s back." Quoted from Y. Yosei’s Whaling in Words and Pictures (1829), 75.
2 Records for 47 years in the period 1738-1840 are missing (Kasuya 2002).
3 The large harpoon had a blade of three feet nine inches in length, and weighed 12½ pounds. It was connected to a eight-foot long shaft of oak. When the harpoon entered the whale the shaft broke free, but the blade held to the whale, as it was made of soft iron and would not bend, making it very difficult for the whale to break free.
4 The blade of the lance was three-feet long and weighed 15½ pounds. Its shaft of oak was 12-feet long.
5 While cruising past southeastern Japan in April 1845, Cooper rescued two groups of 11 Japanese sailors, one shipwrecked on a small island off Japan, and another from a sinking junk. When he arrived near Edo Bay (modern Tokyo Bay) he sent some of the shipwrecked Japanese ashore to inform the emperor of his intention to enter the harbour (Burcin 2005). He was granted permission, and with this became the first American to enter Edo and see the Imperial City. Cooper stayed for four days, but neither he nor his crew were allowed to leave their ship. After having