The Sea Is Where Fishermen Live -The Shirahama Fishery That We Want to Leave to the Next Generation –
Kinan Art Week Dialogue #41
Our guest this time
Toshio Misu, Fisherman
Born in Setokanayama village (now Shirahama town), Nishimuro county, Wakayama prefecture. After the war, he started working as an abalone harvester and fixed-net fisherman because it was a ‘quick way to earn money’; he started single-line fishing around the age of 40, and as an experienced captain, he also operated a fishing boat off the coast of Shirahama. He is now 89 years old. He is still active in the sea and still fishes. He is one of the few remaining single line fishermen in Shirahama.
[Interviewer]
YABUMOTO Yuto
Kinan Art Week Executive Committee Chair
<Edited by>
Kinan Editorial Department by TETAU
https://good.tetau.jp/
Table of Contents
1. Introduction of Toshio Misu
2. The Current State of the Fishing Industry in Shirahama
3. History of the Shirahama Spa and the Misu Family
4. The Future of Shirahama Town
1. Introduction of Toshio Misu
Photographs taken by the Secretariat
Yabumoto:.
I look forward to working with you today. Please let me learn a lot about you. I would like to ask you about the history of Shirahama and fishing. I hear that you have been fishing for all your life.
Misu:.
Yes. It has been a long time.
Yabumoto:.
How many years have you been doing this?
Misu:.
I’ve been doing it since I was about 20 years old, so I’ve been doing it for almost 70 years.
Yabumoto:.
How old are you now?
Misu:.
I’ll be 90 next year. I’m getting to the point where I don’t even recognise my age anymore (laughs).
At first I was diving and catching abalone and working with fixed nets(*). After that, from the age of about 40, I’ve been doing single line fishing(*) ever since. I also worked on fishing boats for a long time. I used to take customers on board and carry them to the fishing grounds. That was the best job I ever had. I was a fisherman and ran a fishing boat. I also published a fishing newspaper. People came from Osaka and Kobe.
Yabumoto:.
What kind of people can come?
Misu:.
There were people who were fishing maniacs that came. I was fishing on a boat with them until I was about 70 years old. After that, I got too old to be a fisherman in my spare time.
*Fixed nets … General term for fishing nets permanently set in the sea to guide and capture shoals of fish. Most are made up of a fence net that blocks the fishway and guides the fish shoal, and a bag net at the end of the fence net, to which an enclosure net or streamer net is attached.
Reference: encyclopaedia mypedia.
*Single line fishing: A fishing method in which one or several hooks are attached to a single fishing line to catch fish. Fishing gear is generally of simple construction, but fishing traps and hooks are designed according to the target fish, and artificial bait other than live bait is used as bait. Fishing is classified into pole-and-line, handline and hook-and-line fishing.
Reference: Shogakukan Encyclopaedia of Japan (Nipponica).
2. The Current State of the Fishing Industry in Shirahama
Yabumoto:
How many fishermen are still fishing with a single line? There are much fewer now, aren’t there?
Misu:
Nowadays, there are maybe three fishermen who are fishing alone anymore. Recently, coral fishing (*) has become more popular. There are more and more fishermen who take coral, and there are hardly any single-line fishermen.
*Coral fishing … The first background to the start of the coral fishery is the decline in the amount of coral landed. (omitted) Another background is the jewellery coral boom. (omitted) Over the past few years, the price of gemstone coral has skyrocketed in the bidding price against the backdrop of rising demand for gemstone coral from wealthy Chinese consumers.
Yabumoto:
There are quite a few people who work as fishermen while running an inn or as dual-use fishermen, but I heard that there are very few people who do it as a full-time job. Why has the number decreased so much?
Misu:
Maybe because we are all getting older now and landings are getting smaller.
Yabumoto:.
Why are landings decreasing?
Misu:.
Why are there fewer fish? What I feel most is the change in the tides. The water temperature is rising, and fish that can be caught in the Pacific are now being caught in the Sea of Japan. Tuna are even swimming around Sakhalin Island in Hokkaido. The whole ecosystem has changed. The area between Kushimoto and Cape Shionomisaki used to be a Mecca for heron (*). But now there are so few of them. The number of isagi has decreased to the point where we can’t even work when fishing for them.
* Isagi (Isaki) – saltwater fish of the family Isakiidae of the order Perchidae. Total length about 40 cm. Body slightly elongated, oval and laterally flattened. Body colour greenish brown, with three yellowish brown longitudinal stripes on the body in juvenile stages. Found along the coast of central Honshu and southwards, and tasty in summer.
Yabumoto:
How much has it decreased?
Misu:
We used to be able to catch more than 10 kilos of isagi every day, but now some days we only catch a few.
Yabumoto:
Not at all.
Misu:
It’s really no longer good business to fish for isagi . It’s not just the isagi , there’s less and less fish overall.
Yabumoto:
How many fishermen were there in the past?
Misu:
In 2007, the Tanabe, Minatoura, Shirahama, Hioki and Susami cooperatives merged to form the Wakayama Minami Fishery Cooperative, but before the merger, the Shirahama Fishery Cooperative had around 120-130 fishermen in the main occupation. Many of them sold their boats and went ashore. I still do it because I like being on the boat.
※For example, the Tanabe Fishery Cooperative had 603 active members in 1986. In 2007, at the time of the merger, there were 223 members, and in 2020 the number had decreased to 78.
Reference: Tanabe City, Fisheries Division.
Yabumoto:
What were the fishermen of Shirahama like? I heard that there were quite a lot of delinquents (laughs).
Misu:
That’s right (laughs). You have to have that kind of energy to be a fisherman. Fishermen have to make a living from fishing. You can’t do it for fun. What you catch that day is your daily wage.
Yabumoto:
What does it mean to “catch fish”?
Misu:.
Fishing is a job after all. You have to ship the day’s catch to the cooperative. At that time, I landed 30-40 kilos a day.
Yabumoto:
What are the tips for catching fish?
Misu:
It may be that the tide or the wind of the day will tell you the point where the fish are coming from. In the end, you have to do your research and study it thoroughly. The point of the day is determined by what you’re fishing for and so on. There aren’t fish everywhere in the whole ocean. It’s whether you know where the fish are.
Yabumoto:
How do you find the right spot to fish?
Misu:
Nowadays, there are methods of using satellite data to find points of interest, and there is also a method called ‘yama datate ‘ (*).
*Yama date (yama-ate) – a traditional method of knowing one’s position at sea and where one needs to be. This technique was indispensable in the days when fishermen fished along the coast with a view of land, in order to know the points where the catch was always plentiful when fishing, reefs near the sea surface that were dangerous for ships to navigate, and fixed places where the tide was swift.
You can use the Kumano mountain range to determine your position. I can see if my ship has shifted in any direction. There are mountains that are used as landmarks to check your position.
Yabumoto:
In the past, there was no such thing as radar.
Misu:
No, there wasn’t. There were things like fish finders that could detect fish, though. We didn’t have anything as sophisticated as radar. We did it with old-fashioned wisdom.
Yabumoto:
How do you know where the fish are?
Misu:
This can be seen by looking at the tide of the day. The fish are at the top of the tide. If it’s this tide, you know that the fish are always at the top of the tide. If you sail the boat there, you will hit the fish. That’s how we calculate.
Yabumoto:
You know what the fish are doing and thinking.
Misu:
Yes. Fish risk their lives. Fishermen risk their lives too (laughs). It’s a game of life and death. It’s different from being a fisherman for fun.
Yabumoto:
Is this something that has been developed through experience?
Misu:
Right. Experience. I’ve had senior people teach me things. I learnt it through my own research, and through the experience I gained day by day. And if you stick to tools and tricks that used to work in the past, you’ll never catch fish. People are clever, but fish have become clever too.
Yabumoto:
You are looking at the whole ocean. Do you mean that you make your decisions by looking at the tides and the temperature of the day? You think, ‘Maybe there are fish here’.
Misu:
The point is determined by the tides of the day. You do the calculations and anchor the boat there so that the net will drift to the fish. The fish are at the top of the tide. Sometimes the tide is against the current, depending on the day. If you’re not used to it, it’s difficult to spot it. It often doesn’t go well.
Some days the fishermen tell me that the fish won’t take a mouthful. There are tides where the fish don’t eat the bait. The tide is divided into an upper tide and a bottom tide, and the bottom tide is called a cold double tide (*). No matter how much bait you give them, they don’t eat it. There are days like that.
*double tide : There is a large difference between the upper and lower tide temperatures in the two tides and fishing. Poor fish bite. Two-level tide
See also: the Japanese Language Dictionary, precise edition.
Yabumoto:
Can fishermen understand that?
Misu:
You can tell after an hour that today is a day when the fish won’t eat the bait. If the fish don’t eat after you’ve made a good plan and made calculations, you’ll know that it’s that kind of day.
Yabumoto:
What does the sea mean to fishermen?
Misu:
Our livelihoods.
Yabumoto:
What kind of boat do you sail ?
Misu:
I think I’ve built the most boats in Shirahama [laughs], I’ve built five boats. The first one was a wooden boat. The boat I’m on now is a plastic boat made at the Kawasaki shipyard in Tanabe. This is my second plastic boat.
Yabumoto:
Please show me your boat later.
Misu:
OK. When we raise the wharf boats, we pull them up with a rope, but camellia trees are slippery, so we run over camellia trees and raise the boats on them.
Yabumoto:
I see.
How far away are the fishing grounds where you can catch fish?
Misu:
The fishing grounds are totally different depending on the fish, but for example, the fishing grounds for sea bream are 20 minutes away towards the west. The water is 90 metres deep there.
Yabumoto:
Did fishermen make money in the past?
Misu:
I wonder if I made any money. When I was an abalone harvester, I earned about 1,000 yen per day.
Yabumoto:
Did you earn a lot at that time? When did fishermen stop making money?
Misu:
High-end fish such as lobster and sea bream have stopped fetching high prices in the past 10 years or so.
Yabumoto:
Is that an effect of foreign production coming in?
Misu:
That may well be the case. I think many people eat both farmed and natural sea bream without knowing the difference in taste. The high-end natural ones have become ridiculously expensive.
Yabumoto:
I see. Have they overproduced and underpriced?
Misu:
In November, the price of sea bream goes up due to demand for New Year’s Day, in the past, the price for a single fish was 10,000 yen. But nowow the price of a kilo of sea bream is 1,500 yen. It’s a surprising price. In the past, the price per kilo used to be at least 3,000 to 5,000 yen.
Yabumoto:
So as a result, young fishermen have disappeared.
Misu:
Right. Shirahama still has a young crowd, but I don’t think there are any youngsters who are fishing with a pole. There are youngsters who dive for seaweed and shellfish, though. But the abalone catching we used to do when we were young has decreased. The water temperature has risen and seaweed no longer grows. The sea has become a place where abalone cannot grow.
The water temperature this morning was 23.5°C. It dropped a bit with the rain the other day, but before that it was about 25 ℃. When the water temperature rises, seaweed stops growing. Abalone grow on seaweed. Seaweed called tengusa is the main staple food. But it doesn’t grow anymore, so abalone can’t grow.
Yabumoto:
How can we get young people to come back to fishing and earn money? There is no one to pass on Mr Misu’s single-fishing experience, is there? It’s a waste.
Misu:
If there are no successors, there is no way to pass it on. But no matter how many young people there are, the fish are disappearing, so there is no work for them. Young people have to make a living too. If you can’t make a living, there is no point in becoming a fisherman.
3. History of the Shirahama Spa and the Misu Family
Yabumoto:
Where did Misu’s ancestors come from in the first place?
Misu:
If you look at the old graves, it looks like Seto-KanayamaVillage (*) all the way down. The airfield runway at Shirahama was originally the Misu family’s rice field. They seem to have lived on a half-farming, half-fishing lifestyle.
*Seto-Kanayama Village – 1 April 1889 – Seto-Kanayama , which had existed since early modern times, formed a separate municipality when the town-village system came into force; 1 March 1940 – Seto-Kanayama became a town and changed its name to Shirahama.
Reference Wikipedia.
Yabumoto:
It’s like ‘Japanese’ [laughs]. My ancestors might have been people who came across the sea. Were your father and grandfather fishermen too?
Misu:
They were in the boring business.
Yabumoto:
Boring ?
Misu:
Their job was to dig hot springs. It seems that seven or eight hot springs have been dug in Shirahama. The first one they dug was the Miyuki source(*). I heard that they dug 100 metres and hit the source of the spring for the first time.
*Miyuki source of spring – The oldest and famous hot water in Shirahama, which is the source from which the Saki no Yu, Muro no Yu, etc. are drawn and which is also mentioned in the Nihonshoki and Manyoshu. The temperature of the spring is 78°C and the quality of the spring is sodium chloride spring. This is one of Shirahama’s most famous hot-spring attractions, with its white steam smoke right beside the Yuzaki fishing port and softly emitting a sulphurous fragrance.
Source: Wakayama Prefecture official tourism website.
There are seven hot springs called Yuzaki Shichiyu, and Yuzaki was a mecca for hot springs. Shirahama Onsen was named after the Showa period (1926-1989). Only Saki no Yu (*) remains now. Bubbles were rising to the surface from below.
Source: Nanki Shirahama Touris
Yabumoto:
How did you become a fisherman despite your roots there?
Misu:
It just kind of happened naturally. I didn’t become a fisherman because I liked it. At the end of the war it was a quick way to make money.
Yabumoto:
You used to be able to mine lead in the past. Were there people mining lead in those days?
Misu:
That was much, much earlier. The name ‘Seto-Kanayama ‘ is the origin of the name of the place, so it seems that it used to be a place where lead was mined . (*) When I was a child, I was told that it was absolutely forbidden to look around and enter the mountains because there were traces of a lead mine called “mabu” (*). I remember that many people in Yuzaki used to get stuck there and go looking for them at night.
*The ruins of the Seto Lead Mountain Mine Mining Site are also located at Sandanbeki Cave, a tourist attraction in Shirahama.
Reference: from Sandanbeki Cave website.
*Mabu … a hole dug in a mine to take the ore. Mines.
Source: digital daizensen.
Yabumoto:
Yuzaki doesn’t have much flat land.
Misu:
Right. People in Yuzaki either worked at sea or grew rice in rice paddies for their own consumption. It is still like half-farming and half-fishing.
Yabumoto:
It didn’t used to be a tourist town, did it？ Since when did it become a tourist town with hot springs?
Misu:
There have always been a lot of hot-spring hotels, though. It’s much more deserted now (laughs).
From the end of the war until around 1955/1965 , it was extremely lively. There was also a flower town. Gradually, the number of jobs using the hot springs increased. In those days, in the evening, customers in geta (wooden clogs) used to wander around the town. Nowadays, you can even eat ramen inside inns, right? That’s why customers don’t come out to the town.
4. The Future of Shirahama Town
Yabumoto:
What do you think of the way Shirahama is developing now? What would you like to see happen or do you have any hopes?
Misu:
I think you have to make use of the local specialities. Shirahama is a hot spring resort, so it would be good to bring more of that as the main attraction. I think there are a lot of tourism resources that are still lying dormant. For example, there is an Inari shrine in Shirahama, wouldn’t that also count as a point of interest?. It has been neglected. I wonder if the red torii gate there is still there. Shirahama is a hot-spring resort town, so I think tourists prefer that kind of thing to the more gaudy ones.
Yabumoto:
I think tourism is important, but I think it is difficult nowadays to be all about tourism. I think there is value in fishing, agriculture and forestry. When I came to Kinan this time, it was not easy to meet fishermen.
Misu:
I suppose so, because the fishery has been in decline for the last ten years or so. We haven’t been able to develop a successor. I’m still a fisherman at my age, but there are no fishermen in the generation below me. There are some young ones though.
Yabumoto:
For example, how can you sell a red snapper for one million yen? The catch is decreasing, so I think the fishery can only go in that direction.
Misu:
Difficult. The value of natural products has worn off and demand is declining.
Yabumoto:
For this Kinan Art Week, I am wondering if we can use art to rethink the fishing industry, starting from the point of “why do humans fish?”.
Misu:
If fishermen can make a living from fishing, I don’t care how they do it. It’s not possible with the fishing we do now. I can’t make a living selling red snapper at 1,500 yen per kilo.
Yabumoto:
I would like to focus my wisdom on how to sell red snapper for 10,000 yen. I wonder how we can supercede the market. There seems to be a problem in the world with too much fish being produced by aquaculture.
Misu:
Farmed fish used to be easily recognisable when you ate it, but technology has improved and it is now impossible to tell. But the texture of the fish is different when you eat it as sashimi. The flesh is different between fish from a fish tank and fish swimming in the wild. People nowadays probably think that if the price is low, that’s good enough.
Yabumoto:
Does it mean that too much is being taken and not distributed in time?
Misu:
But the amount of natural fish we take is decreasing. Besides, the price is low. The price of fish sales is directly related to livelihoods. Even if you catch the same amount of fish, if the price goes down, the amount of money you get will also go down. The amount of fish that can be caught is no longer an option.
Yabumoto:
How can the fish come back?
Misu:
There is already nature. The main current of the Kuroshio used to flow along the coastline, but since five or six years ago it has been meandering from Cape Muroto to the other side of Ise Bay. I don’t know what caused this meandering. The best tide used to be the upwelling tide, a branch of the main current of the Kuroshio, but that tide has stopped coming in these days.
1: Non-meandering tangential channel 2: Non-meandering detached channel 3: Large meandering channel
The condition in which the Kuroshio Current flows as a large meandering channel is known as the Kuroshio Meander. When the Kuroshio Grand Meandering occurs, cold water in the lower layer rises between the meandering Kuroshio and the southern coast of Honshu, creating a cold water mass. This cold water mass also affects the location of fishing grounds, so fishermen are paying close attention to its movements.
Source: JMA What is the Kuroshio Meander?
Yabumoto:
If this continues, fishermen are likely to disappear from Kinan.
Misu:
I don’t know what will happen when our generation comes ashore.
Yabumoto:
Do fishermen of Mr Misu’s generation talk to things that are not visible ?
Misu:
It’s there. It’s a battle of wits with the fish. If I don’t catch a fish at the point I’ve decided on today, I’ll say I won’t catch any more today, and I won’t go any deeper.
Yabumoto:
As a final question, is there anything you would like to leave behind for the next generation?
Misu:
I guess what I want to leave behind as a fisherman is to teach them the points I know. I would like to teach people how to fish or something like that, but I am most happy when people buy the fish I catch for a price. This month, the price of a sea bream is 1,500 yen per kilo, but if it goes to 2,000 or 3,000 yen, the amount I get will double.
Yabumoto:
Do we have to raise prices? What, then, is the attraction of Shirahama Town?
Misu:
There are many tourist attractions in Shirahama. There’s Engetsu Island, Senjyoshiki and Sandanbeki Cave. Even now, we sometimes take our guests on cruises around the islands, and they are very happy when we go near the hole in Engetsu Island or right under the Sandanbeki Cave. I think it would be good if you could create a sightseeing course on a better boat, even if you don’t take a fishing boat like ours. I think they should do a better job of publicity.
Yabumoto:
I learnt so much. Thank you very much.
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