INDIGENOUS PRACTICE

OF JAPAN

ACTIVITY 4

SUBMITTED BY: CZARINA SALAZAR

AQUACULTURE
When Japan was defeated in WWII, fish hauls at ports in Wakayama and around Japan were
decreased drastically. Seeing the situation, Koichi Seko, the first President of Kindai University,
envisioned the sea as a large tank and came up with the notion of "fish cultivation in the sea".

This is the origin of fish farming.At that time, only commercial fishing was done in the open sea,
yet despite the disbelief of most fishermen, Seko strongly advocated fish farming to promote
the fisheries and the self-sufficient nation in marine resources.

Then, in 1948, a seaside research facility that later known as the Aquaculture Research Institute
was born in Shirahama in Nanki area.Eventually, the hard efforts of Seko himsell and others had
brought the first success on fish-farmed yellowtail. They continued to venture in with more
expensive fishes such as red sea bream and great amberjack, which had drew attention to the
Aquaculture Research Institute from people in the fishing industry.
Today, the Aquaculture Research Institute started by Koichi Seko has brought up aquaculture
industry which produced some 150,000 ton of yellowtail.

 Agriculture (nogaku) in ancient Japan, as it remains today,

was largely focussed on cereal and vegetable production,
with meat only being produced in relatively limited
quantities. Early food sources during the Jomon Period (c.
14,500 - c. 300 BCE or earlier) were millet and edible
grasses. The first traces of crop cultivation date to c.
5700 BCE with slash-and-burn agriculture. Farming of
specific and repeated areas of land occurred from c.
4,000 BCE.

By far the most important staple food was rice. There is

evidence of rice c. 1250 BCE, introduced to Japan via
migrants from mainland Asia in the late Jomon Period, but
its cultivation was likely not until c. 800 BCE. The first
evidence of growing rice in wet fields dates to c. 600 BCE
when the technique was introduced, again by migrants

AGRICULTURE
from Asia, during the transition from the Jomon to the
Yayoi Period. The earliest paddy fields appeared in the
south-west and then spread northwards. Yayoi immigrants
also brought azuki beans, soybeans, wheat, and, from
China, what has become the Japanese dish par
excellence, sushi.
 FOOD
As Japan is a collection of variously sized islands, seafood was easily
acquired and was much more popular than meat, animal husbandry being
a more costly and time-consuming source of food. Examples of seafood
eaten are shellfish, seaweed, sea cucumber, bonito, bream, sea bass, eel,
carp, mackerel, sardine, salmon, trout, shark, prawns, squid, jellyfish, and
crab. Fish, if not eaten fresh and on site, was transported inland dried.

Such quintessential Japanese dishes as tempura and sukiyaki

were introduced to the islands much later - tempura via the
Portuguese in the 16th century CE and sukiyaki in the early
20th century CE after beef was made fashionable there by
western Europeans

one important drink which, again, remains a quintessential symbol of Japan

is sake or rice wine. In mythology, the drink comes from Tokyo, a gift from
Sukunabikona, the god of magic and healing. Sake was and is a common
offering to the gods of Shinto shrines. Finally, illustrating the antiquity of
sake and its importance in Japanese culture, Otomo no Tabito (665-731)
famously composed 13 poems praising the drink
TRANSPORTATION
IN JAPAN

In the past Japanese used horses to draw a cart or sometimes even people carried goods on their shoulder
or drew the cart to transport goods and people on land. In present time, Rickshaws are commonly believed
to have been invented in Japan in the 1860s, at the beginning of a rapid period of technical advancement. In
the 19th century, rickshaw pulling became an inexpensive, popular mode of transportation across Asia.
Peasants who migrated to large Asian cities often worked first as a rickshaw runner. It was "the deadliest
occupation in the East, the most degrading for human beings to pursue." The rickshaw's popularity
in Japan declined by the 1930s with the advent of automated forms of transportation, like
automobiles and trains. In China, the rickshaw's popularity began to decline in the 1920s
that number doubled by 1930.