Based on deep historical roots, Japanese fishermen enjoy legally-guaranteed equitable access to and “ownership” of the living aquatic resources in coastal waters. Further, no conceptual distinction exists in Japan between land holdings and land tenure and sea holdings and sea tenure, since fisheries rights have a legal status equal to that of land ownership.
According to the Fisheries Law (1949) fisheries rights in the sea area under the jurisdiction of a Fisheries Cooperative Association (FCA) are the bona fide personal property of the individual members of that Association, to whom they are distibution by the Association. Each FCA establishes regulations for the control and operation of various types of fishery in an equitable, efficient and sustained manner, as local conditions dictate. This situation has its origins in both customary law and in the formal legislation of the Japanese feudal era, although democratic processes and equitable treatment had to await the sweeping institutional reforms that followed World War II.
As this study has demonstrated, sea tenure in Japanese coastal waters is a complex subject. It represents a continuity of tradition and involves time-honoured customary procedures that have, after suitable modification, been gradually incorporated into modern legislation. It operates at various levels, ranging from the national government, through the prefecture and the local FCA, to the fishing squad and finally to the individual fisherman.
In present day Japan the FCA is a vitally important intermediate organization that links the central and prefectural governments with the individual fisherman. Although comprising the fundamental unit of governmental fisheries administration and being the key organization for the implementation of official fisheries projects, an FCA belongs entirely to the local community of fishermen. The FCA lies at the hub of modern Japanese fishing communities, in which it constitutes the focus of social and economic activities. But, as throughout modern history, its principal function remains the planning, management and continuing sustained development of the local sea territory to which a community has tenure.
Although “incipient FCAs” existed during the feudal era and were more fully formed by the 1901 Fisheries Law, they were essentially controlled by village middlemen and other dominant personalities. Yet in so many ways the modern Japanese FCA is really only an elaborate variant of the traditional fishing village organization that has persisted since feudal times, and maybe even earlier. The beneficial aspects of traditional village institutions were not abandoned during the modernization of Japan. Instead, they were transferred to Fishery Associations and later to Fishery Cooperative Associations. Thus the organization and administration of modern Japanese coastal fisheries owes much to the continuance of an entity developed during feudal times.
What emerges in summarizing the situation over the past eight decades since the implementation of the 1901 Fisheries Law is that, apart from modernization, little fundamental change has occurred within the local fisheries organizations. Present day regulations pertaining to entry rights and fishing grounds remain essentially the same as those of the Edo Period, as, in many areas, do those regarding size limitations and seasonal regulations on the species taken. In reality, too, the tenured territories of the local FCAs have varied little, apart from a trend towards aggregation under consolidated FCAs, as have traditional concepts of the entry rights of outside fishermen. Overall the major trend discernible in coastal fisheries has been one of institutional simplification together with a reduction of the former proliferation of institutions and administrative procedures.
It may appear initially as if the Japanese coastal fisherman is strictly bound by many detailed rules and regulations handed down through a rigidly hierarchical structure from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, via the prefectural Fisheries Office to the FCA, which finally issues them to the individual fisherman and ensures their enforcement. But this is deceptive. An analysis of the documents issued in support of regulations, such as the “Exclusive Fisheries Rights Documents,” issued to each FCA, for example, reveals an ambiguity and generality of language, characteristics that lend to the documents, which limit themselves virtually to a simple statement of basic principles and fundamental rules of behaviour, a wide latitude for interpretation. In general, the rules and regulations permit flexibility, on a characteristically Japanese case-by-case basis, as suited to the specific requirements of each FCA.
Detailed application of basic ministerial or prefectural guidelines is left entirely to the FCA -- in which every fisherman is ensured a voice -- and in many instances to the specialized fishery squad. Thus within a framework of basic policy guidelines decided at the two higher levels, the planning, management and monitoring of coastal fisheries rests essentially in the hands of the day-to-day operators. The FCA is at the core of the regulatory process and can adapt its implementation or execution rules and regulations to the local needs and conditions of specific fisheries, based on the empirical information provided either directly by the fishermen or indirectly by their fishing behaviour and performance. Again, this is a tradition continued from the feudal period, during which time fief-level officials limited their interventions to major factors of concern to the fief and left the everyday decisions and operations firmly in village hands.
The local administration of Japanese coastal fisheries is a complex, highly structured yet locally-controlled system that, as has been demonstrated, evolved from deeply engrained customary village procedures. Within the overall framework of the formal regulations exists an unwritten community customary law that, more firmly than official rules and regulations, governs fishermen's behaviour according to local norms. First-comer's rights to a particular fishing spot, skill, knowledge and secrecy, pride of workmanship and community pressure to conform, all serve to balance excessive competitiveness and to ensure that all but the most intractable conflicts are resolved by informal mechanisms. Local community perceptions of social and “owned” space are one of the keys to understanding the territorial and tenurial behaviour of Japanese coastal fishermen, since community norms are flouted at one's peril and the threat of social banishment is real and horrifying. On the other hand, the anonymous prefectural regulations, and even more those established by the remote Ministry, are generally regarded as less binding.
One characteristic of Japanese society in general is that people need closely the opinions and criticisms of their fellow community members, somewhat less closely those of the neighbouring community, and only nominally those of the larger society. Japanese rural communities, and no less those of the fishermen among them, may well be characterized as inward looking and parochial in their behaviour. This fundamental characteristic seems to have been thoroughly appreciated by those who framed fisheries legislation, since they enacted the basic structure but left the details and implementation firmly under community control.
In those terms most contemporary problems in Japanese coastal fisheries, such as environmental degradation, pressures from other economic sectors and the like, can be interpreted as a resounding clash between local and non-local perceptions and norms of behaviour. Paradoxically, the very strength and continuity of the tradition of parochiality is a major drawback in present day Japanese coastal zone planning. So strong are his rights, in fact, that the coastal fisherman has a major impact on other forms of coastal zone resource use. Whereas by invoking eminent domain and on payment of compensation the government can expropriate fishing grounds for, say, reclamation and industrial development, a private developer is faced with a different situation. Prior to initiating any project he must purchase all the rights that would be lost as a consequence of the development, or compensate for any reduction in the quality of the rights, or a combination of both. But if the fishermen refuse to relinquish their rights there is nothing to be done about it, since not even the central government is permitted to intervene when an FCA is resolutely opposed to such a transaction. But big money is persuasive and vast sums have been paid to compensate FCAs for their rights, often under dubious circumstances. Whereas most fishing communities seem to have solved such problems amicably, some have suffered as a consequence of conflicting opinions regarding the disposition of their fisheries rights.
Paralleling the continuity of tradition in coastal fisheries management is the persistence of time-honoured processes and techniques of conflict management and resolution. This is as equally true of intra-community conflict as for those at higher levels. It is noteworthy that since the inception of Japan's modernization drive, at the beginning of the Meiji Era, the central government and judiciary have played only insignificant roles in resolving inter-sectoral clashes. Rather, conflicts were resolved either by local authorities or by the contending parties themselves, employing such traditional devices as mediation, conciliation and arbitration. Even many serious disputes were mollified by privately negotiated indemnity contracts. The usual process of settling a dispute was for an initial negotiation to be followed by a confrontation between angry fishermen and the polluter, and finally by an offer of compensation by the latter. Typically, such a process would be repeated until a particular controversy was finally settled. On the other hand, where such techniques and processes have been ignored conflicts commonly become bitter, deeply entrenched and difficult if not impossible to solve. This was particularly apparent in some of the major conflicts between industry and fishing communities. It is also noteworthy that the Dispute Law was based essentially on the modern application of these traditional techniques of conflict resolution. The payment of compensation monies is a timehonoured means used in Japan to recompense the legitimate claims of the aggrieved party. Nevertheless, in particularly intractible cases the judiciary played an important role, and the post-war development of legal safeguards for coastal fisheries is inseparable from the evolution of Japanese environmental legislation, stemming as they do from three generations of court cases to compensate for rights lost through pollution and other causes.
Despite its problems the Japanese system of coastal sea tenure, which ensures intra-village cooperation and reasonably equitable access to resources, is unparalleled throughout the world. It stands in striking contrast to conditions in most other countries, be it the impoverishment of most other Asian fishermen or the unmitigated chaos that reigns in U.S. coastal waters. But given its unique history, long genesis, social contexts, merits and demerits, which certainly make the Japanese system intellectually fascinating as well as stimulating to fisheries administrators in other countries, there remains the challenge of evaluating it for transfer to other socio-economic contexts. Where as evaluation and the design of plans based upon it are probably not beyond our capacities, implementation in other socio-political contexts might well be.
