Water Before Fish: Japan's Fundamental Fisheries Survey and the Currents of Empire, 1909-1918

Abstract

This paper examines changing scientific understandings of ocean space from the perspective of the Fundamental Fisheries Survey (1909-1918), the first state-supported program of oceanographic fisheries research in Japan. Over the course of the 1910s, survey members mapped the dynamics of major Pacific ocean currents, notably the Kuroshio and Oyashio, off the coasts of the Japanese archipelago. Survey leader Kitahara Tasaku and a network of observers examined links between saltwater and the locations of finfish by using toolkits and methods inspired by those employed in the North Atlanticfocused International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. The history of the Fundamental Fisheries Survey suggests that in an early twentieth century era of emergent Japanese fisheries expansionism, fish-finding became a powerful justification for oceanographic work.