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National Geographic : 1977 Dec
Contents
Fishing villages fill the pockets where island hills slope to the shores, and there are stir rings of life there on this early morning, the first one of May following a pink and per fumed April of cherry blossoms. FOR NEARLY FOUR HOURS we have waited for the trawler's net to fill. We are fishing for squid. Yoshiaki Tsurumi, the owner and skipper of the boat, is 66 years old, but his strength and stamina are those of a man half that age. He has spent a lifetime on this sea, and from it has drawn his liveli hood, in nets like that he has now command ed to be raised. The hum of the giant winch is like an over ture to the parting of the watery curtain. The four members of the crew, mostly family, have taken up positions to receive the catch. Among them is Tsurumi's wife, Kinue, the paradigmatic optimist who is forever smiling (even now the dazzle of the silver in her teeth is cleaving the shadows cast by the hood of her black slicker). It is a bountiful catch. Pale as paste, and stringy with arms, the squid fill the six holds of the boat-but not before staining the deck with their inky discharge. One crew member, on hose-and-swab detail, is speaking to him self in Japanese, and what he is saying trans lates, more or less, as, "Cursed be a fish with such messy juices." By noon most of the squid have been sold directly to brokers, whose boats have pulled alongside. They in turn will sell them, at a prof it,in the dockside markets. Tsurumi explained: "I don't have time to take the fish to shore and get the higher price because the season for squid is too short. We can make more money by staying at sea, catching as much as possible, and selling to those who come to us." For others, too, the Inland Sea is a track for the running of a race against time. Industrial ists have packed much of the Honshu shore line with heavyweight plants-shipyards, refineries, steel and textile mills-to maintain the swift pace of Japan's revving economy.* At the same time, environmentalists are work ing here to restore health to the ailing waters against the time when, possibly, all the squid are gone, enfolded in a poisonous net of sludge and slime. "The fishing," Tsurumi is saying as he pins a pickle between chopsticks, "gets worse each year. But I will fish until the day I die." Luncheon has been spread on the afterdeck. There is rice, bean-paste soup, raw squid, pickles, and small plums of puckering tart ness. It will soon be time to raise the net again, and to move one catch closer to the end of the brief squid season. I TIS TIME that I move on, in this the third week of my travels along the Inland Sea. It will take me another month to cover the 300-mile-long waterway from end to end-from Osaka to Shimonoseki. There are islands to be hopped, and steep, temple topped hills to be climbed. There are paths of history to be followed, and feasts of scenery to be searched out from behind whorls of mist and fog. There is Seto town to be savored. In all of the Inland Sea expanse, no place is greener, to my way of thinking, or more in the good graces of nature, than the Sada Misaki. This peninsula is on the western reach of Shikoku island. It is there that Seto town sits, and its approaches exact the caution one grants a watchdog showing gums. For the peninsula has a spine of mountains, and the main road is wedged much of the way between loose-rock embankments and the lips of piny voids. The descent into Seto town carries through hills banked with orange groves, and where it levels off, there stands the Inland Sea, now gray and sullen under the heavy splash of rain. I came to a ryokan, a Japanese inn, and the proprietress said (Continued on page 840) *See "Those Successful Japanese," by Bart McDowell, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, March 1974. Spatter-branded by their trade, weary painters call it a day at the Hitachi Zosen ship yard on Inno Shima. One of some fifty major shipbuilding facilities around the Inland Sea, the yard specializes in construction of multipurpose cargo carriers and container ships. Japan today supplies half of the world's new ship tonnage and ranks first in number of nationally owned vessels. Her secret: an enthusiasm for new, more efficient methods, and the energy and willingness of the Japanese worker. 834
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