Japan's International Fisheries Policy

Japan's International Fisheries Policy
Author: Roger D. Smith
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2014-09-19
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1317682874

Few nations rely upon the ocean as much as Japan for livelihood, culture and transport. The seas have long played a vital role for the Japanese, helping to support the economic and social life of a nation that possesses few resources and little arable land, and sustain a population that has nearly tripled in the last century. Fish are a distinctive feature of the Japanese diet, constituting nearly half of all animal protein consumed – the highest rate in the world. The industry itself has provided an impetus for coastal community growth and national economic development over the past century, while fisheries have worked their way into Japanese culture and customs, serving as a dominant symbol in traditional arts and folklore. This book explores the overarching rationale that motivated Japanese international fisheries policy throughout the post-war period until today, highlighting the importance of international fisheries to Japan and the stature this resource has occupied as a national interest. It provides a comparative view of Japanese foreign policy at various ocean conferences, treaty negotiations, bilateral diplomatic initiatives and other maritime relations that constitute ocean policy over half a century, and investigates the domestic constituents of national policy. Roger Smith argues that the rationale for international fisheries policy may be best viewed as deriving from Japan’s unique defence strategy for its national interests: comprehensive security. Encompassing non-military elements and most importantly defence of economic interests, Japan’s international fisheries policy provides an interesting case study of how comprehensive security is conceptualised and carried out. Taking a broad view of Japan’s international fisheries policies from 1945 to the present, this book highlights the key trends in policy motives and means throughout the post-war period. As such, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of Japanese studies, international and environmental law, resource management and international relations, as well as to policy makers working in the field.

Fisheries Management in Japan

Fisheries Management in Japan
Author: Mitsutaku Makino
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2011-08-26
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9400717776

Japan is one of the world’s largest fish-eating countries with a long history, and has developed its own customs and values in terms of managing fisheries resources. The first half of this book introduces the history and institutional features of capture fisheries management in Japan, with 9 case studies from sub-arctic to tropical ecosystems, from sedentary to migratory species, and from small-scale coastal to offshore industrial fisheries. For example, coastal fisheries management is more community-based, and local people have the authority and take priority in the decision-making process. In contrast, offshore fisheries are more industrialized and commercially oriented, and the national government plays a major role in their management. One of the main challenges in world fisheries is to implement the ecosystem approach, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution for its implementation. The second half of this book considers the advantages and limitations of the Japanese fisheries management regime and discusses the necessary environmental policy measures to bridge the gaps between fisheries management and ecosystem-based management. As a case study, management measures in the Shiretoko World Natural Heritage area are analyzed. In closing, the Grand Plan of Japanese fisheries policy for the next 20 years and three future scenarios are presented.

Ozawa Ichirō and Japanese Politics

Ozawa Ichirō and Japanese Politics
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2014-11-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317677242

Ozawa Ichirō was the axis on which Japanese politics turned for more than two decades. He helped to reshape the electoral system, political funding rules, the evolution of the party system, the nature of executive government, the roles and powers of bureaucrats, and the conduct of parliamentary and policymaking processes. Admired and reviled in almost equal measure, Ozawa has been the most debated and yet least understood politician in Japan, with little agreement to be found amongst the many who have debated his patent political assets and palpable political flaws. This book examines the political goals, behaviour, methods and practices of Ozawa Ichirō, and in doing so, provides fascinating insights into the inner workings of Japanese politics. It explores Ozawa’s paradoxical and conflicting contributions in terms of two contrasting models of ‘old’ and ‘new’ politics. Indeed, therein lies the problem of understanding the ‘real’ Ozawa: he remained a practitioner of old politics despite his rhetorical agenda of change to bring about new politics. In seeking to unravel the Ozawa enigma, Aurelia George Mulgan reveals his primary motivations, to establish whether he sought power primarily to enact reforms, or, whether his reform goals simply disguised power-seeking objectives. This volume seeks to illuminate Ozawa’s true character as a politician, and untangle the complex elements of old and new politics that he represents. Through an in-depth study of Ozawa and his political activities, this book shows how the Japanese political system works at the micro level of individual politicians, political relationships and systems. As such it will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Japanese politics, Asian politics and political systems.

East Asia's Demand for Energy, Minerals and Food

East Asia's Demand for Energy, Minerals and Food
Author: Kate Barclay
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2016-02-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317634500

China Japan and South Korea’s international relations are shaped by the fact that all three countries are significant importers of resources. This book brings together work on specific aspects of the politics of resources for each of these countries, regionally and internationally. There are some similarities in the approaches taken by all these three. For example, their development assistance shares a focus on infrastructure building and reluctance to purposefully influence domestic politics. However, there are also significant differences due in large part to the individual nature of the states as international actors. China has significant domestic supplies of resources while Japan and Korea are net importers. China’s size also marks it out as different, as does its state socialist history and continuing authoritarian state. One of the key issues to understanding contemporary resource politics in Northeast Asia is that Western dominance of the world order is currently declining. In some cases Northeast Asian approaches to resources are seen as being mercantilist. In other cases Northeast Asian powers are seen as replacing Western powers in exploiting resource-rich developing countries. This book gives readers an informed view of this very important issue in contemporary international relations. This bookw as published as a special issue of Asian Studies Review.

Beyond the Tragedy in Global Fisheries

Beyond the Tragedy in Global Fisheries
Author: D. G. Webster
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 483
Release: 2017-09-08
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0262534738

An analysis of how responsive governance has shaped the evolution of global fisheries in cyclical patterns of depletion and rebuilding dubbed the “management treadmill.” The oceans are heavily overfished, and the greatest challenges to effective fisheries management are not technical but political and economic. In this book, D. G. Webster describes how the political economy of fisheries has evolved and highlights patterns that are linked to sustainable transitions in specific fisheries. Grounded in the concept of responsive governance, Webster's interdisciplinary analysis goes beyond the conventional view of the "tragedy of the commons.” Using her Action Cycle/Structural Context framework, she maps long-running patterns that cycle between depletion and rebuilding in a process that she terms the management treadmill. Webster documents the management treadmill in settings that range from small coastal fishing communities to international fisheries that span entire oceans. She identifies the profit disconnect, in which economic incentives are out of sync with sustainable use, and the power disconnect, in which those who experience the costs of overexploitation are politically marginalized. She examines how these disconnects shaped the economics of expansion and documents how political systems failed to prevent related cycles of serial resource depletion. Webster also traces the increasing use of restrictive management in response to worsening fisheries crises and the emergence of new, noncommercial interests that demand greater management but also generate substantial conflict. She finds that the management treadmill is speeding up with population growth and economic development, and so concludes that sustainable fisheries can only exist within a sustainable global economic system.

Bridging Troubled Waters

Bridging Troubled Waters
Author: James Manicom
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2014-03-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 162616035X

The territorial dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands has repeatedly strained Sino-Japanese relations. Bridging Troubled Waters reminds us that the tensions over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands are only a part of a long history of both conflict and cooperation in maritime relations between Japan and China. James Manicom examines the cooperative history between China and Japan at sea and explains the conditions under which two rivals can manage disputes over issues such as territory, often correlated with war. The author advances an approach that offers a trade-off between the most important stakes in the disputed maritime area with a view to establishing a stable maritime order in the East China Sea.

Fisheries Ecology and Management

Fisheries Ecology and Management
Author: Carl J. Walters
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2020-06-30
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0691214638

Quantitative modeling methods have become a central tool in the management of harvested fish populations. This book examines how these modeling methods work, why they sometimes fail, and how they might be improved by incorporating larger ecological interactions. Fisheries Ecology and Management provides a broad introduction to the concepts and quantitative models needed to successfully manage fisheries. Walters and Martell develop models that account for key ecological dynamics such as trophic interactions, food webs, multi-species dynamics, risk-avoidance behavior, habitat selection and density-dependence. They treat fisheries policy development as a two-stage process, first identifying strategies for varying harvest in relation to changes in abundance, then finding ways to implement such strategies in terms of monitoring and regulatory procedures. This book provides a general framework for developing assessment models in terms of state-observation dynamics hypotheses, and points out that most fisheries assessment failures have been due to inappropriate observation model hypotheses rather than faulty models for ecological dynamics. Intended as a text in upper division and graduate classes on fisheries assessment and management, this useful guide will also be widely read by ecologists and fisheries scientists.

Fish Diversity of Japan

Fish Diversity of Japan
Author: Yoshiaki Kai
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 447
Release: 2022-01-21
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9811674272

This book reviews and summarizes the studies on the fish diversity of Japan. It covers the present knowledge of ichthyofauna, habitat distribution, phylogeography, ecology, morphology, and conservation, as well as the history of ichthyology and fish collections in Japan. The book comprises five parts: I. Fish Diversity and Ichthyology of Japan, II. Habitat Distribution and Species Diversity, III. Diversity within Species: Phylogeographic Perspective on Japanese Fishes, IV. Morphological and Ecological Diversifications, and V. Conservation of Fish Diversity in Japan. The Japanese Archipelago is surrounded by two major warm and one cold currents. It is located in the western North Pacific and encompasses several climatic regimes from north to south. Although the land area of Japan is small, the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Japan ranks as the sixth largest in the world, including several marginal seas (Sea of Okhotsk, Sea of Japan, and East China Sea), and deep trenches (Izu-Ogasawara, Japan, and Kurile Trenches). Owing to a variety of marine habitats and a complex geological history, Japan has a rich fish species diversity, representing over 4,500 species in 370 families. The richness of fish species diversity has attracted many scientists since the late 1700s, and continuous studies have led to the development of ichthyology in Japan. With chapters written by leading experts in the field, the book will provide a stimulating and reliable resource for future research and contribute to the progress of ichthyology of the world.