Place, Science, and Technology: Salmon Hatchery and Local Watershed Management in Northeastern Japan

• In Event: Dams, Fish, and Birds: Citizen Participation, Scientific Knowledge, and Environmental Governance in Japanese Watersheds

Abstract

Since the Meiji period and the origins of the Japanese state’s modernization of fisheries and resource management, salmon propagation has always been the preeminent concern of Japan’s national fisheries policies. These new state policies included the introduction of the scientific artificial propagation of salmon, whose practices have since become an essential pillar of the subsistence strategies in each Fisheries Cooperative Association of local communities in Northern Japan.
Based on the historical documents and ethnographical survey, this presentation begins by describing complex historical socio-environmental interactions and outcomes of the transplantation and implementation of the scientific hatchery into the local community Tsugaruishi, which is famous for its success of salmon enhancement. An analysis of the process shows that the entities of historical local cognitions, knowledge, and practices and technologies of watershed management have been the fertile soil for science implementation and practices. However, scientific attempts to simplify its practices have undermined the local entities, especially since 1952, when scientific salmon stock enhancement operations became under national jurisdiction, and it increasingly developed specialization and division of management practices, labor and knowledge of all aspects of propagation operations. This shows the cultural and political marginalization of local people in salmon propagation and fishing, the territorial polarization among river and bay fishers, and the fragmentation of a local empirical watershed view as an organic network of multiple-scaled neighboring ‘lived places.’ Examining the methodology of ‘to-be-placed,’ this paper shows that a localized hatchery technology has possibilities to bridge fragmented stakeholders as a core of local watershed adaptive management.

Author

• Mayumi Fukunaga, University of Tokyo