Mineral Resources, Agriculture and Fishing in Japan

Mineral Resources:

Mining is a rela­tively unimportant branch of the Japanese economy. Although endowed with an in­adequate mineral base in general, Japan is fortunate in having more plentiful coal, though it is of relatively poor quality, and much of it is expensive to mine. Coal ac­counts for about half of all mineral production, and one-sixth of its energy re­quirements. There is also a marked shortage of coking coal, and Japan has to depend on both coal and oil imports to a growing extent for its industries.

The two major coal producing regions are northern Kyushu and western Hokkaido. The larg­est developed deposits are in northwestern Kyushu near Kitakyushu, close to the sea, where it can be easily distributed to the consuming areas by water transport. Popu­lation and manufacturing are particularly concentrated around the head of the In­land Sea, where Kyushu coal is delivered at low cost.

But Kyushu fields have lost much of their importance because of the gradual exhaustion of the richer seams and the poor quality of the coal mined. The Hok­kaido fields also he near the sea; its coal seams are thicker than those of Kyushu, and the use of mechanized large-scale min­ing methods have resulted in higher output per miner.

Japan’s oil deposits are very meager; the annual domestic production of crude oil is less than 4 million barrels which amounts for a negligible fraction of the country’s oil consumption. The oil-bearing belt extends from northern Honshu on Sea of Japan to Ishikari lowlands in Hok­kaido. Most of the wells are shallow, and the oil is generally of poor quality.

Natural gas is produced in Honshu; a major area is in the Kanto region. Japan controlled the southern half of Sakhalin Island from 1905 to 1945 and developed and produced petro­leum for its domestic market, but the supply was shut off when Sakhalin returned to Russia at the end of World War II. In order to feed a variety of its modern indus­trial and transport operations, Japan has to import oil which has steeply risen espe­cially since 1950.

Oil is increasingly used as fuel in thermal power stations. Nearly 60 percent of energy consumed in 1984 was derived from oil; the contribution of other sources such as coal, natural gas, nuclear power and hydroelectric power collec­tively is 40 percent.

Although Japan is one of the world’s major steel makers, domestic resources and production of iron ore are insufficient; the fields are widely scattered, and the quality of ore is poor. The major field is at Kamaishi in northeastern Honshu. To meet the deficiency Japan must import iron ore from mainland Asia, (South China, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, India), and Australia.

Most of the key lesser metals associated with the iron and steel industry are available domestically in small quantities. Manganese, nickel, tung­sten, cobalt, tin, mercury, antimony, lead, bauxite reserves are all negligible or inade­quate, amounting to a small fraction of the domestic demands.

Among the metallic ores, only copper is more important. Domestic production was sufficient for Japanese pre-World War II requirements. With the large-scale indus­trialization since 1950, domestic production is far from sufficient to meet the demand, and a good deal of it must be imported. Lead and zinc are found in asso­ciation with copper. Other metallic ores mined include silver, gold, molybdenum, and titanium. The most noteworthy non- metallic resource is sulfur, one of the basic materials needed for industry.

Because of its climate and topographic configuration Japan’s hydroelectric power resources are considerable. A central mountain spine, steep slopes, ample and well-distributed rainfall, and the concen­tration of major markets at the foot of the mountains create an overall situation con­ducive to hydro development.

The extensive network of small, torrential riv­ers can also be utilized for irrigation, but flooding is a serious problem in many parts of the country. As a result of the rug­ged topography, the hydroelectric potential is unevenly distributed. The vari­able flow of the most rivers makes it necessary to build small standby thermal electric plants. Most canyons are narrow and offer little storage room.

Although hy­droelectric development is largely concentrated in central Honshu, and some parts of Kyushu, the distribution is well lo­cated in relation to the important industrial regions. The scattered location of the sites on a number of small rivers and mountain streams has helped to make power widely available making it possible that industrial development was not lim­ited to a few sites where coal was cheap.

Most of the installations are small, the larger ones are in central Honshu, and the smaller ones are widely distributed. Be­cause of higher costs involved in the construction and maintenance of hydro plants, Japan has turned to oil-fired ther­mal or nuclear thermal plants, distributed primarily on the coast where refineries and markets are concentrated.

Hydroelec­tric power accounts for less than 5 percent of energy consumed in the country, as compared to nearly 60 percent obtained through oil-fired energy, and nearly 9 per­cent supplied by nuclear sources. Despite possession of relatively vast hydroelectric resource, three-fourths of which has actu­ally been developed Japan, the country has turned to cheaper and more efficient sources for the production of electricity to offset the periodic shortages of power that were associated with hydropower.

Agriculture:

Japan by no means pro­vides the most suitable natural conditions for agricultural development. The steep and densely wooded mountainous terrain and generally poor soils leave only around one-eighth of the land fit for cultivation. But by most standards, Japanese agricul­ture can be called one of most efficient in the world particularly in terms of the use it makes of its available resources.

Japanese national average yields are exceeded only in a few small favored areas in the world. And it is undoubtedly a tribute to the inge­nuity and hard labor of generation of Japanese farmers that a near self-sufficiency in most food crops has been achieved de­spite a substantial population growth since the late 19th century.

As the rapid growth of urban factory industry during the “World War I and since then offered large numbers of rural agrar­ian workers full time industrial work away from their villages, the proportion of the labor force employed in agriculture began to decline. On the other hand, population in general had been growing, and demand for food products had been increasing which in return accelerated the steady in­crease in agricultural prices.

The administration, on its part, adopted a pol­icy of providing incentives to farmers to grow more food, vegetables, produce, meat, and dairy products. This policy was particularly successful after World War II when the production of meat, dairy prod­ucts, citrus fruits and a variety of vegetables increased spectacularly.

As industrialization and urbanization increased, Japanese consumers steadily switched from rice to bread, and western- style breakfasts continued to grow in popularity. Despite attaining self-sufficiency in rice, a variety of citrus fruits, and vegetables, reliance on imported wheat, beef, pork, chicken, and dairy products continued to grow.

Overall national self- sufficiency in 1980 was around 70 percent. By the early 1990s, food, beverages (and to­bacco) accounted for about 15 percent of Japan’s total imports, and she had become one of the world’s largest importers of a number of major crops. The rapid growth of industry during the post-World War II had already weaned away the workers from the villages at an unprecedented rate.

By the end of 1980s, less than 10 percent of the labor force was employed in agricul­ture; in the early 1990s this figure fell to less than 7 percent. Agriculture’s share to the nation’s total output has also declined sharply during the last century—from about 40 percent in 1890 to less than 3 per­cent in 1990.

Japanese agriculture is land-intensive; the emphasis is on high production per unit of land. The intensity of pressure on the cultivated land is reflected in a number of agricultural practices that are best associ­ated with its agriculture, and much of the Asian agriculture. Through the country, except in most level areas, terracing is prac­ticed. Over the ages, terraces have been laboriously carved of hillsides and are sup­ported by retaining walls of earth, brush, masonry or boulders, some of which are several feet in height. As in several coun­tries in Southeast Asia, terracing of the sloping hillsides is particularly significant for raising wet crops such as rice.

Multiple cropping and intercropping are also widely practiced in making the most of the limited area fit for cultivation. One-third of Ja­pan’s cultivated land is double-cropped. As in many wet rice lands in Asia, transplanta­tion, a land-conserving practice is widely practiced for paddy. After a period of sev­eral weeks, when the rice plant is a foot high, the seedlings are gently pulled from the flooded seedbeds and transplanted to larger paddy fields.

Perhaps more than any other nation, a characteristic feature of Japanese agricul­ture is an intensive use of organic and inorganic fertilizers—such as bean and oil cake, bone meal, seaweed, and fish cake. During the last few decades chemical fertil­izers have been increasingly used at an enormous scale.

Nearly 90 percent of the cropped land is devoted to food crops. The single most important crop in terms of crop area, pro­duction, value, and social significance is rice. Rice is grown on the best land, dis­tributed primarily on the productive lowlands and the terraced lower slopes of the hillsides. Abundant rain, and a gener­ally mild climate helps the farmers to raise two to three crops annually in Kyushu and Shikoku, although the cultivation of a sin­gle crop in a year extends to far north up to even Hokkaido where wheat gains in importance.

During the last four decades the farm­ers have with government support, spent heavily to mechanize rice cultivation within the limits of their small fields. To­day, farmers rent or buy motorized planters that neatly set out trays of seed­lings. Virtually all aspects of planting have been changed by technology.

A light­weight tilling machine has replaced the ox-driven plow; herbicides have eliminated weeding; chemical fertilizers have in­creased production; and mechanized harvesters and vehicles haul the grain to the market. The use of early-maturing and high-yielding varieties have extended the usable growing season and widened the area of growth to regions earlier consid­ered less suitable.

Japanese crop yields are among the highest in the world—for rice it is 80-85 bushels per acre for a single harvest as compared with 50 to 60 bushels in China, 50 in the United States, and 30 or so bushels in India and in Southeast Asia. Japan is now nearly self-sufficient in rice, and even exports small quantities.

Wheat, barley, rye, oats are other food crops which collectively occupy half of the area devoted to rice. Wheat is usually grown as a subsidiary crop or between rice harvests without irrigation. Barley, rye and oats make use of higher, unirrigated or less fertile land. Like wheat their cropped area lies mostly in Hokkaido. With the in­troduction of western habits of diet, the consumption of bread has increased. Sweet potatoes form a big crop in the south. Vegetables and beans are generally rotated with rice or grown on field borders.

Apart from timber and forest, the two most important tree crops in Japan are tea and mulberry (used to feed silkworms). Tea gardens occupy a fraction of the crop­land, occupying most of the country’s unrewarding uplands. Diluvial uplands and steep, terraced hill slopes not suited for most food crops are usually given to tea growth. Shizonka, Prefacture is the na­tion’s most important area for the tea cultivation. The crop has suffered from competition from cheaper, plantation-grown tea in India and Sri Lanka. Japan produces roughly 4 percent of the world’s tea production, and imports some.

The importance of silk as cash crop and as an important source of foreign exchange, has greatly diminished recently as a result of the development of rayon, and nylon. Japan now produces almost a sixth of world’s artificial fibers including rayon and nylon. Silk culture, however, remains almost a monopoly of Japan and China and an important item of exports from both.

It is concentrated in areas of dense population or uplands, or on land that can be spared. The major area of mulberry trees lies in central Honshu. The raising of silkworms until they spin their cocoons is an intensely laborious job, requiring prodi­gious amounts of hand labor, and has become a household undertaking. Japan exports most of silk to the United States; China is now emerging as its solid com­petitor.

Fishing:

Japan is the leading fishing country in the world; her production ap­proximates one-sixth of all the fish caught commercially in the world. Next to rice, fish forms an essential part of Japanese diet, and is eaten in a variety of ways: salted, smoked, pickled, raw, and cooked. The national taste for seafood is well known. Virtually everything caught is consumed or used. A part of the fish catches especially the scraps and entrails, is used as fertilizer or turned into animal feed or fish oils.

The traditional importance of fishing in Japan is derived from a combination of need and opportunity. A small, crowded country with little arable land has fortu­nately been blessed with substantial aquatic resource. The three main islands possess a long, indented coastline, and no part of the country is far from the sea. Fishing along the shores of Inland Sea was one the basic elements of economy since the beginning of the Christian era.

As the Japanese moved northward along the coast of Honshu, fishing villages were among the early settlements. By the 17th century most of the nearest shore waters were al­ready fished. The growth of population in the last century, and the modern tech­niques learned, has led to a remarkable development of the fishery industry in modern Japan with the result that the Japa­nese eat more fish per capita and harvest a greater variety of fish products than the people of any other nation. In 1990, the to­tal Japanese fish catch of all types amounted to a little over 10 million metric tones the highest in the world.

Although the fishing industry is dis­tributed over 3,000 fishing villages distributed along all the coasts of Japan major concentrations are on the coasts of the Inland Sea and eastern coast of central Honshu. The coastline is long and very in­dented, which maximizes contact with the sea and provides numerous good harbors, particularly for fishing boats.

A propitious convergence of cold and warm currents, especially off the coast of Hokkaido where the north-flowing warm Kuroshio Ocean current from equatorial waters and the cold south-flowing Oyashio meet and mix, yield a rich harvest of plankton and fish.

The Japanese fishery industry is essen­tially a marine fishery, although inland pond fishing has gained recently. Pond raising of fish started in the early 19th cen­tury and the culture of pearl industry dates only from 1915. Rivers and streams, lakes, even mandated paddy fields in season, also provide freshwater fishing. Ninety percent of freshwater fish is consumed as food. The remainder is made into fertilizer and oil.

A major portion of Japan’s fish catch is derived from waters within 20 miles (34 km) of the Japanese coast, although Japa­nese fishing vessels have long scoured the western and northern Pacific for their catch. In fact, Japanese fishermen have been active in every ocean in the world, in­cluding the Antarctic, where they account for a large share of the world whale catch.

The Second World War had serious conse­quences for Japanese fishing, particularly the loss of rich fishing rights off the coasts of the Kurils, Sakhalin, Korea, and Kam­chatka, from which she obtained about one-sixth of her total prewar catch. Sak­halin and the Kurils were absorbed by the Soviet Union in 1945. The government of South Korea has barred the Japanese fish­ermen from all waters around Korea.

In spite of these restrictions, the fish re­sources available to Japan are extensive, but as in the case of forests, they are being used up rapidly. Despite its dominant in­ternational position, Japanese industry now faces a number of serious problems, partly resulting from structural weaknesses within the industry and partly due to the restrictions imposed upon it by nations that have claimed a 200-mile economic zone in their coastal waters. Until the 1960s fish products remained an important export item that helped pay for her what it had to import. But m recent years imports of fishery products have exceeded exports.