The geopolitics of whaling and Japanese colonialism in Korea

ABSTRACT

Although Japanese colonialism in Korea lasted less than half a century (1910–45), Korea served as a critical foothold for Japanese expansion into Asia and the Pacific. The Japanese Empire once encompassed a fifth of the globe, and its reach was just as contingent upon dominating marine environments as it was on land-based conquest. Reading Japanese colonialism as a volumetric undertaking, we examine colonial archives, whaling statistics and legal documents to understand how geopolitical ambitions shaped, and were shaped by, colonial whaling projects to dominate marine spaces around colonial Korea. Japanese whalers employed volumetric techniques to control voluminal marine space and its constitutive elements – including whales – and to satisfy the political and economic needs of colonial and later wartime Japan. However, while Imperial Japan's extensive subordination of marine space has earned it the moniker of a ‘pelagic empire’, we find its territorialization was always partial and incomplete, impeded as it was by material realities. Our analysis of Japanese colonial whaling demonstrates how the ongoing process of (re)making marine territory is intertwined with, and reliant upon, terrestrial and aerial volumes.

KEYWORDS:

• colonialism
• environmental geopolitics
• territory
• marine environments
• volume
• volumetric
• Japan
• Korea

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Britain and the United States also attempted to join this whaling competition. However, the English company Holme, Ringer & Co. was not able to conclude a whaling agreement with the Koreans. As the business was not profitable due to taxes and port levies, while competing with Russian and Japanese whalers, it pulled out of the whaling business in 1901 (Burke-Gaffney, 2012; Kim, 2013). On the other hand, American whalers did not participate in Korean grounds in the late 19th century. Although the US Consul General to Korea (Augustin Heard II) requested whaling approval around Korean seas (1893), the Korean government did not permit it (Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, 2021).

2 However, Japan maintained diplomatic and economic relationships with some countries, such as Korea (the Joseon dynasty), China, the Netherlands, Kingdom of Ryukyu (now Okinawa) and Hokkaido.

3 Apart from these two species, the whaling record around colonial Korea shows other harvested species, including the blue whale, sperm whale, humpback whale, sei whale, right whale, minke whale and dolphin (Park, 1995). In terms of Japanese home waters, whale harvests ‘consisted mainly of sei, sperm, and fin whales, with a small number of blue and humpback, and an occasional right or gray whale’ (Terry, 1950, p. 26).

4 Such legal reforms are emblematic of blue territorialization as a state strategy of ocean governance (Ong, 2020).

5 Our thanks to Dr Mia Bennett for this observation.

6 The diversified utilization of whales was documented in statistical data between 1933 and 1943, such as fertilizers (1937–40), bone powder (1933–36, 1942), bone (1941–42), dolphin hide (1941–42), baleen (1938–42) and canned whale (1939–43) (CS0084001942, KOSIS, 2020; DT_999N_082043, KOSIS, 2020). However, we did not find information as to how much these products manufactured from whales sourced from Korean waters contributed to the whaling economy of mainland Japan.

7 The various records also illustrated how the facilities such as canneries and whale oil plants were located adjacent to colonial whaling stations (Seoul Shinmun, 1947).

8 According to Park (1995, p. 283), four stations were located on the east coast, one station on the south and two stations on the west: (1) East: Yujin (established in 1920), Shinpo (1913), Jangjeon (1926) and Ulsan (1926); (2) South: Jeju Island (1926); and (3) West: Heuksan island (1916) and Daecheong Island (1918). Among these seven stations, the three places (Shinpo, Jangseon and Ulsan) were already leased and developed by the Russian predecessor.

9 This whaling fleet was not only for whaling in colonial Korean seas but also for whaling around mainland Japan and the Pacific Ocean.