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.

Chapter 6 discusses the socio-economic changes the arrival of industrial whaling brought to the fishing community of Ayukawa in northeastern Japan in 1906. While fishermen were first critical of whaling in Ayukawa, they soon accepted the new industrial whaling practices, and the town became the central hub of coastal industrial whaling. It is argued that the local elite played a crucial role in mitigating environmental pollution by buying up whale carcasses that had been thrown away and turning them into whale fertiliser. This not only reduced coastal pollution but also created job opportunities, leading to a mass influx of immigrants from other regions. Soon, the opposing fishermen in Ayukawa found themselves to be a minority in their own village, as the new immigrants had a keen interest in preserving industrial whaling.