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1 results

  • 8 - Washing Away the Past

  • from Part II - Destroying the Cetosphere, 1850–2019
  • Fynn Holm, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany
  • Book:
    The Gods of the Sea
    Published online:
    10 August 2023
    Print publication:
    24 August 2023, pp 169-187
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  • Summary

    Chapter 8 traces how northeastern Japan became the national centre of industrial whaling after the 1911 Hachinohe uprising. With the example of Ayukawa, this chapter argues that industrial whaling was reinvented as a local culture after World War II in northeastern Japan with the organisation of whaling festivals, the building of whale monument stones, and the production of a feature film. Nowadays, people in northeastern Japan see themselves as representatives of a Japanese national whaling culture, and most do not know that their ancestors fought against the introduction of whaling for 300 years. Thus, its former identity as a non-whaling region has disappeared almost entirely from the collective memory. However, the excessive hunting of whales as well as the changing international landscape eventually brought an end to commercial whaling in 1987, leaving the ‘whaling towns’ of the Northeast without their main source of income. The situation was further complicated by the 2011 tsunami that destroyed large parts of Ayukawa and was seen by many as the end of whaling in Japan.