Food Culture

Tomiji Saito is the Representative Director of the Ayukawa Town Planning Association, which operates Whale Town Oshika. He was born in Ayukawahama, where he still lives and works today. In July 2020, two momentous events converged to highlight the whaling history of the tiny coastal community of Ayukawa that sitsContinue Reading

Hiroshi Katsumata was born in 1962 in Kamogawa City in Chiba Prefecture. He began working at Kamogawa Sea World in 1987, and became Director of Zoological Operations in 2016. He is a former rugby player. Kamogawa Sea World is now celebrating its 50th anniversary. The venue located in Kamogawa inContinue Reading

Jay Alabaster is a Ph.D. student at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism in Arizona State University. He currently lives in Taiji, Japan, where he is working on a book and his dissertation. You can find him on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/alabasterjay. His email is jay.alabaster(at)asu.edu. It’s September again! Perched onContinue Reading

This is the second of a two-part series on the history of Japanese whaling. Part 1: The Birth of Traditional Whaling in Japan Shigeo Nakazono is a scholar and author engaged in the research of cultural assets and sociology, and curator of the Ikitsuki Island Museum (Shima no Yakata) inContinue Reading

This is the first of a two-part series on the history of Japanese whaling. Part 2: Transition to a Modern Whaling Nation Shigeo Nakazono is a scholar and author engaged in the research of cultural assets and sociology, and curator of the Ikitsuki Island Museum (Shima no Yakata) in Hirado,Continue Reading